Christmas Tradition . . . .

[redcliffsw]

Christmas did not become a government holiday until President Ulysses S. Grant, whom Lysander Spooner called "the chief murderer of the ["Civil"] War," declared it to be one in 1870.  (See No Treason, Chapter 19).  One has to wonder:  How did Christians ever manage to celebrate the birth of Christ for the previous 1, 869 years?

That year was also the exact time at which the pseudo-Christian Grant was orchestrating the genocidal mass murder of the Plains Indians under the supervision of his old pal, General Sherman.  Having played a big part in the murder of hundreds of thousands of fellow citizens, Grant was then preoccupied with managing the mass murder of the Plains Indians.  Like his former boss, Abe the Atheist, he used religion to cover up his crimes.

The post Civil War era was a period in which the Republican Party was busy nationalizing everything and anything — even Christmas.  Atheistic Abe nationalized Thanksgiving in 1863.  In the 1880s marriage was nationalized and heavily regulated by the state in reaction to the growth of Mormonism.

Government regulated marriage because of its supposed disapproval of men who had children with several different women.  Today, of course, the government lavishly subsidizes the system whereby millions of American men have children with several different women.  It's called the welfare state.  The big difference is that under the Mormons' polygamy men took care of their own offspring.  With the welfare state government is the "daddy."  The state is therefore the mother of all deadbeat dads.
-Thomas DiLorenzo

http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/the-1870-year-old-christmas-tradition/