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Sheldon Cooper: “In the pre-Christian era, as the winter solstice approached and the plants died, pagans brought evergreen boughs into their homes as an act of sympathetic magic, intended to guard the life essences of the plants until spring. This custom was later appropriated by Northern Europeans and eventually became the so-called Christmas tree.” ****

Sheldon: Oh, yes. We had a tree, we had a manger, we had an inflatable Santa Claus with plastic reindeer on the front lawn. And to make things even more jolly, there were so many blinking lights on the house they induced neighbourhood-wide seizures.

Penny: So I take it you don’t want to help us trim the tree.

Sheldon: I do not. But if you insist on decorating a spider-infested fire hazard in my home I would request that you add this.

Penny: What is it?

Sheldon: You’re kidding, right? It’s a bust of Sir Isaac Newton.

Penny: Oh, sure, sure, yeah. Very Christmassy.

Sheldon: Wait, excuse me, but it’s much more Christmassy than anything you’ve put on the tree.

Leonard: Here we go.

Sheldon: December 25, 1642, Julian calendar, Sir Isaac Newton is born. Jesus, on the other hand, was actually born in the summer. His birthday was moved to coincide with a traditional pagan holiday that celebrated the winter solstice with lit fires and slaughtered goats. Which, frankly, sounds like more fun than 12 hours of church with my mother followed by a fruitcake.

No matter how many times you hear Sheldon Cooper (or anyone else) say Christmas is based on a pagan holiday (whether Saturnalia, Sol Invictus, or anything else), we simply have no documented evidence of this. None. If you read the writings of the Church Fathers (those in the early Church immediately after the Apostles), you do not find those who assign Christmas to December 25th saying things like, "Let's put Jesus' birthday here so we can subvert a pagan holiday." (Not that subverting pagan holidays is a bad thing.) They simply don't do that.

The ones who say Jesus was born on December 25th do so because that is when they think he was born. Nothing personal, but I'd give more credence to the word of Christians only a generation removed from the Apostles before that of anyone here (let alone Sheldon Cooper).