u/KiwiHellenist had an answer just the other day about Pagan traditions in modern Christmas, along with some links to previous answers about the same topic.

While it would be pretty neat if pagan traditions actually survived unchanged for thousands of years, as usual the answer is mostly "people just made this stuff up in the 19th century"

There is an aspect of this question that has not been addressed. I believe it is the source of some of the frustration that finds itself at the heart of OP's question and in the many deleted posts! u/KiwiHellenist is to be commended for an excellent post on this and hats off to /u/WelfOnTheShelf for keeping the flag waving.

That said, there is a natural frustration on the part of enthusiasts of "pagan roots." There was clearly an old fascination with the importance of the winter solstice: it finds its expression in prehistoric stone alignments, in the Roman Saturnalia, and what little we know of pre-conversion Northern European Yule celebrations. With all of this, it is all too easy to see survivors in early modern Christmas traditions.

Coincidentally, it is all too easy for historians rightly to shoot down attempts to connect the dots between "pagan roots" and these early modern traditions. So what is going on here?

Folklore is in constant change, but sometimes there is also continuity in the midst of that change. Europe is far enough to the north that its residents have consistently seen significance in the darkest period of the year, and it is natural to imagine (and occasionally to demonstrate) that they acknowledged the importance of this time with traditions. They inherited traditions from previous generations, and those traditions changed through time as they passed on to the next generations.

What remained a constant was and has been the fascination with this time. It appears that many European cultures consistently saw this as a time when the veil between the world and the next became thin, when dead ancestors, spirits of various sorts, or whatever, could enter the home and needed to be avoided and/or placated.

Are these traditions tied together historically? Certainly not in a way that can be demonstrated with historical method, and for the most part, that should be and is the end of the discussion as far as the discipline of history is concerned.

Are these traditions tied together thematically? That leads us to a realm with vague, unverifiable answers. It is easy to answer yes - and that is certainly the way I see it. One can imagine changing traditions mutating so completely that as one generation passed them on to the next that there is, in fact, some continuity. But this cannot be proven. None of that is not "doing" history. This question and its intuitive answer is, I believe, the source of the frustration expressed here.

So I have a follow up question. What effect did Oliver Cromwell the Lord Protector have on the loss for Winter and Christmas traditions in the British Isles? I know I have heard that he outlawed Christmas and probably other traditions either because they were connected to paganism or Catholicism but am unsure if this is true.