On January 1, A.D. 400, Asterius, bishop of Amasea[1] in Pontus (Amasya, Turkey) preached a sermon against the Feast of Calends ("this foolish and harmful delight")[2] that tells a lot about the Lord of Misrule in Late Antiquity. The New Years feast included children arriving at each doorstep, exchanging their gifts for reward:[1][2]

"This festival teaches even the little children, artless and simple, to be greedy, and accustoms them to go from house to house and to offer novel gifts, fruits covered with silver tinsel. For these they receive, in return, gifts double their value, and thus the tender minds of the young begin to be impressed with that which is commercial and sordid."

--Asterius, in "Oratio 4: Adversus Kalendarum Festum" [2]
It contrasted with the Christian celebration held, not by chance, on the adjoining day:

"We celebrate the birth of Christ, since at this time God manifested himself in the flesh. We celebrate the Feast of Lights (Epiphany), since by the forgiveness of our sins we are led forth from the dark prison of our former life into a life of light and uprightness." --Asterius, "Oratio 4"

Significantly, for Asterius the Christian feast was explicitly an entry from darkness into light, and although no conscious solar nature could have been expressed, it is certainly the renewed light at midwinter, which was celebrated among Roman pagans, officially from the time of Aurelian, as the "festival of the birth of the Unconquered Sun". Meanwhile throughout the city of Amasea, although entry into the temples and holy places had been forbidden by the decree of Theodosius I (391), the festival of gift-giving when "all is noise and tumult" in "a rejoicing over the new year" with a kiss and the gift of a coin, went on all around, to the intense disgust and scorn of the bishop.