The Watchtower used to quote from Alexander Hislop's book, The Two Babylons, to show the pagan origin of the Cross, Christmass trees, holidays and so on.
The full title of the book is:
"The Two Babylons or The Papal Worship: Proved to be the Worship of Nimrod and his Wife"
and you can see just from the title where the bad influence on religion is attributed.
I believe the book at one time was even available to order at the Kingdom Hall literature counter!
An online PDF version including the illustrations is available at:
http://www.eaec.org/bookstore/The%20Two%20Babylons%20-%20Alexander%20Hislop.pdf
Ralph Woodrow has written a book, THE BABYLON CONNECTION?, exposing the bad scholarship contained in Hislop.
http://www.ralphwoodrow.org/books/babylon.htm
A good review of The Two Bablyons is at:
http://www.geocities.com/jayce8565/babylon.html
The reviewer writes,
"It is rather unnerving to realize that a "classic" reference work could be accepted for so long, for the most part unquestioned, without many of it's short comings being previously exposed to public view, but to a large extent that seems to be exactly what has happened."
--VM44