Question: Why Are Red & Green Christmas Colors?

Currently I'm knee-deep in the laborious, time-eating & painstaking process of painting my living room walls an utterly fabulous shade of green (no doubt entirely too much more on that later). It occurred to me that, even though red & green are a pretty terrific color combination, I would never feel comfortable using red for, say, my futon cover. At best I would use red for accent pieces. Maybe a pillow, or a bit in a painting. All because of this Christmas crap.

It seems entirely unfair that the same holiday which stole so much from the pagans should also take away a perfectly valid color scheme. Why? Why green, why red? Why couldn't they have picked yellow? Or beige? I don't like either of those. I know it's not like you can't use green & red in tandem...but who wants to, given the implications? You might as well paint the walls with red & white vertical stripes.

My initial thought was that green = tree & red = blood (from sacrifices during Saturnalia - though it seemed unlikely the Romans would make sacrificial offerings during this celebratory festival, they did get their jollies from watching gladiators prance about slaughtering exotic animals, so...). While forming definitive answers to most anything is of little interest to me, I did come across the following in a brief perusal of Google search results:

1) Green = tree. Red = poinsetta.
2) Stolen from the Africans! In this version, green is the adopted color of Islam & means "everlasting life". Red symbolizes blood shed in defense of the principles of love, truth, peace, freedom & justice.
3) The red represents the blood of Jesus Christ at the time of his crucifixation (I'm not much of a religious scholar, but is this not why we have Good Friday & Easter? Isn't Christmas a celebration of his birth?). The green was stolen from the Africans! Nah, it didn't say that, but it did say "everlasting life".
4) Romans gave each other gifts of green plants during Saturnalia, including holly, which has red berries. The plants were meant to symbolize the continuance of life & the coming of spring.
5) According to a former Wal-Mart employee who was "let go" after writing this email, red & white represent the aminita muscaria mushroom. No mention of green.

So, I have gone from having a vague guess to having some vague ideas, with no notion as to the veracity of anything I read. Oh, internets. You tease with knowledge & statements the truthfulness of which tends to be questionable.

Holly seems to be quite the loaded symbol, though. You've got your thorns & your drops of blood in the leaves & berries. Steal the wreath theme from the Romans & you can make a nice little crown.

Too bad it's for the wrong holiday.