The pagan origin of most of our Christmas customs is undoubted. Even the cheery Christmas-tree is a symbol of heathen rites in times long antedating Christ. The early Christian fathers, in adopting the popular usages of their predecessors, and bending them to the service of Christianity, made wondrous little change in them, beyond the substitution of new motives and names for the old festivals peculiar to several seasons of the year. The British Druids' feast of Alban Arthur, celebrating the new birth of the sun, occurred at our Christmas time, and is still celebrated at Pontypridd, Glamorganshire, every year. It begins on the 22nd of December, and lasts three days, during which period the sun is supposed to fight with Avagddu, the spirit of darkness, the great luminary having descended into hell for that purpose. On the third day he rose, and the bards struck their harps, rejoicing that the sun had again been found. The Pontypridd ceremonies are similar to those of Midsummer-day, already mentioned. The Arch-Druid presides in the folds of the serpent circle--when he can get there, that is, for he is old, past eighty, and the Druidic hill is apt to be slippery with snow and ice at this time of the year. He prays to the pagan god, and perhaps chants a poem in Welsh.[133] The Druidic fires of the winter solstice feast were continued in customs like that which survived in Herefordshire until recent years, when on old Christmas-eve thirteen fires were lighted in a cornfield, twelve of them being in a circle round a central one which burned higher than the rest. The circle fires were called the Twelve Apostles, and the central one the Virgin Mary. In a shed near by was a cow with a plum-cake between or upon her horns, into whose face a pail of cider was dashed, with a rhyming address, and the cow tossing her horns from her unexpected baptism naturally threw the plum-cake down. If it fell forward, good harvests were predicted; if backward, the omen was evil. A feast among the peasants followed. In the Plygain in like manner survives the Druidic custom of going to the sacred groves before dawn on this morning, to greet the rising of the new-born sun after his struggle with the evil principle. FOOTNOTE: