“By establishing the Feast of the Lord’s Birth on December 25, the Church did two things; first, she clearly rejected pagan ideas about life, death, birth, etc., and showed that Christ had come to replace those lifeless and g1oomy teachings (i.e. Reincarnation);  secondly, the Church confessed her undying faith in a great dogma: that God had taken flesh from a woman and come to dwell among and save men.”
(From ‘The Orthodox Word’, December, 1980)