Christmas and the Catholic Church

Midnight Mass has been part of Christmas since basically forever, starting around 400 AD. St. Nicholas got attached to Christmas when the Protestants were trying to phase out all the pagan holidays and fun in general. The medieval versions of Christmas carols were based on a pre-Christian style of singing where a leader sang a verse and then a crew of dancers sang and danced to the chorus together. And because of that, there was ritual transvestism as part of Christmas continuing to be extremely based.