The lively remembrance of the Savior’s birth should not be confined to any certain days in the year but should call forth our gratitude and praise every day.  We read nothing in the New Testament of setting apart one particular day for the celebration of this great event.  The minds of the apostles and primitive disciples were so imbued with the spirit of the gospel that they appear to have disregarded those external circumstances and associations which have, since, so greatly occupied the thoughts of men.  We never find the apostles, when at Jerusalem, visiting holy places or seeking after relics.  No allusion to any such thing is found in the pages of the New Testament.  And, yet, if we had been informed of the precise time of our Savior’s birth, there would be no harm in paying attention to this anniversary without superstition.  But, the day of the year in which Christ was born is utterly uncertain and never can be ascertained without divine revelation.

Archibald Alexander (1772-1851), from the web site Reiterations