> (And before someone screams "citation needed," I'll just say that it's well known, and if you didn't know it by now, there's a thing called Google and Wikipedia that you can go look at.)

Lots of beliefs are "well known" and nevertheless wrong. Just look at all the people, even in this thread, claiming that Santa Claus was invented by Coca Cola, even though a simple google image search will reveal illustrations of Santa from before Coco Cola was founded. As for the pagan traditions around new years they are not very well documented and a lot is speculation.

Of course gift-giving is known throughout history, but the figure of Santa Claus is associated with the Christian celebration. I'm pretty sure you wont find any reference to Santa Claus or Father Christmas from before Christianity!

> Christmas's roots are from pagan traditions

So? Most religious traditions were stolen, whoop de do. What matters is how they're practiced in 2019, in which case Christmas is almost synonymous with Christianity.

> I'll just say that it's well known

There is no actual confidence in how all of this stuff came to be, just a lot of conjecture - and so no, it's not well known at all.

It seems contradictory for you to say in your previous comment that Christmas as practiced in 2019 by Americans doesn't matter when discussing Santa because of the religious roots, and then follow that up by saying the history of the religious roots don't matter because they're practiced differently in 2019.

Take a look at the comments in this thread about how non-christians observe Christmas.

Christianity has no monopoly on Christmas.

Except they practice gift-giving without any of the rest that comes along with - that's not Christmas, that's commercial exploitation. Big difference.

They call it Christmas though. So it is not your version of Christmas but theirs. Also you can't be certain it is commercial exploitation. What if some you are referring to give mostly homemade and charitable gifts. Certainly would be the minority but you are lumping a lot of people together.