Christmas is not some sort of thousand year old tradition.

Here in England up until say 250 years ago the majority of the population were peasant subsistence farmers in relatively isolated communities. None of them would have recognised a festival named Christmas on 25 December.

Which is not to say that they did not celebrate - some who were educated (not likely) would have heard the story of Jesus Christ, whereas others would celebrate the winter solstice in a festival according to local traditions. And I do mean local as there were no easy transport links and a journey of several miles to the next town would have been considered an expedition.

At this time of the year there is not much you can do as a peasant farmer. If you were lucky enough to have animals then animal husbandry would continue but agriculture obviously not happening. They had time on their hands, it's dark and cold, so a good incentive to celebrate something.

The Industrial Revolution changed all that. Capitalism needed workers in factories and it was somewhat inconvenient having a ragtag collection of holidays clustered sometime around the solstice. Over time they chose one particular day December 25 to close the factories instead of workers randomly being absent.