Doing some research of the early fathers it's evident that it was the done thing to preach the connection in Christmas homilies.peregrinator wrote: ↑Fri Dec 29, 2023 4:33 pm It's true that Christ was born around the time of the solstice and St. Jerome attached a mystical meaning to this.
Cyprian, in De pascha Computus, 19 3rd century...
O, how wonderfully acted Providence that on that day on which the Sun was born . . . Christ should be born.
Gregory of Nyssa Sermon on the Nativity of the Saviour 4th century...
And again let us resume it: “This is the day which the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it,” – (the day) on which the darkness begins to decrease, and the lengths of night are diminished by the increase of the sun’s rays.
In the fourth century, John Chrysostom (del Solst. Et Æquin. II, p. 118, ed. 1588), says:
But Our Lord, too, is born in the month of December . . . the eighth before the calends of January . . . But they call it the ‘Birthday of the Unconquered’. Who indeed is so unconquered as Our Lord. . .? Or, if they say that it is the birthday of the Sun, He is the Sun of Justice.
St Augustines Christmas sermon in 401AD contains a chastisement for those new Christians still celebrating the winter solstice rituals for fun...
Stop these latest sacrileges, stop this craze for vanities and pointless games, stop these customs, which no longer take place in honour of demons but still follow the rites of demons … Yesterday, after vespers, the whole city was aflame with stinking fires; the entire sky was covered with smoke! If you make little of the matter of religion, think at least of the wrong that you do to the community. We know, brothers, that it is kids who have done this, but the parents must have let them sin.
Paulinus of Nola in Carmen 14, 13...
13. So the day which bestowed so great a gift by setting Felix in the heights of heaven is the day of our yearly ritual. It comes after the solstice, the time when Christ was born in the flesh and transformed the cold winter season with a new sun, when He granted men His birth that brings salvation, and ordered the nights to shorten and the daylight to grow with Himself. The twentieth day that dawns on us after the solstice marks the heavenly glory which Felix merited.