After months of red-and-green evergreen decorations in every store, and an increasingly unbroken stream of Santa-centric pop songs in every public place, the annual American onslaught reaches its peak this week.Every year, those of us who don’t celebrate Christmas find ourselves having the same debates over and over again, starting well before Thanksgiving and continuing into the New Year.

Rather than see Christmas as comprising an alternative or analogous form of religious expression, or dependent on any causal relationship to the Christian tradition, Deacy’s premise is that it is religious per se, and, moreover, it is its very secularity that makes Christmas such a compelling, and transcendent, religious holiday. A Growing Number of Americans Say NoPresident Trump and his wife, Melania, at the lighting of the National Christmas Tree near the White House in November.Kelly Huerta portrays Mary and her son Michael portrays baby Jesus in a Christmas pageant in Frackville, Pa.Jacqueline Dormer/Republican-Herald, via Associated Press But much the same story can be told about Hanukkah — a minor Jewish holiday elevated to provide an American consumerist alternative to Christmas. Provides a new take on established literature on the relationship between Christmas and religion, including a revisiting of the way Durkheim and Eliade have … The logical solution to the problem is, unfortunately, one that would also be quite offensive to devout Christians. Celebrating Christmas does not necessarily make one complicit in oppression. So here we are, shouting across a religious and cultural divide, while our Christmas-celebrating peers do the same. Christmas has both religious and secular aspects. On days before Christmas, I notice nativity scenes in the malls, buildings and at the private houses. Since it's easier to see other people's privilege than our own, having the primacy of one's experiences questioned can feel tantamount to a threat. I also see Santa Clauses, reindeer, Christmas trees, Christmas wreaths and mistletoes. Christian beliefs about Christmas might offend someone in our secular and multicultural society, so we ignore its religious and historical background. (I'm not alone in this: According to a recent study, So the Christmas season means being actively, relentlessly confronted with the gaps in my privilege. Waves like this have broken on us before, and will again. What if the legislature and A disturbingly similar situation exists wherever Christians are faced with legal challenges to practices they have come to regard as their rights: officially sanctioned status: Such a decision by the legislature or courts would likely be offensive to devout, practicing Christians. Burton-Hill, Clemency (2014). In reality, the official stance of the government should not be "anti" but "non"—a distinction this group fails to acknowledge. And, it must be said, much of that anti-Semitic oppression throughout history has come from our Christian neighbors.These are not idle fears. He notes that there was a deliberate effort to prevent children from becoming greedy in response.In the early 20th century, Christian writers such as "It is not lawful, O Stranger, for us to change the date of Crissmas, but would that Zeus would put it into the minds of the Niatirbians to keep Exmas at some other time or not to keep it at all. And when I asked him why they endured the Rush, he replied, "It is, O Stranger, a racketMost customs traditionally associated with Christmas, such as decorated trees, presents, and The expression "the War on Christmas" has been used in the media to denote Christmas-related controversies.The claim of Brimelow, O'Reilly and others was that any specific mention of the term "Christmas" or its religious aspects was being increasingly In some cases, popular aspects of Christmas, such as A controversy regarding these issues arose in 2002, when the New York City public school system banned the display of Since at least 2005, religious conservative groups and media in the United States, such as the Like in the United States, in the United Kingdom it has become common for some of the country's media to publish exaggerated or even completely false 'Christmas banned' stories between late November and New Year's, one of the most well-known of these being the temporary promotion of the phrase In November 2009, the city council of Dundee was accused of banning Christmas because it promoted its celebrations as the Winter Night Light festival, initially with no specific references to Christianity. It is firmly associated with a religious tradition that erases our existence at best, and oppresses us at worst. It is firmly associated with a religious tradition that erases our existence at best, and oppresses us at worst.Unlike other religious minorities in the U.S., Jews like me have been granted enough privilege to be newly rattled every year when Christmas rolls in, and to be treated as authoritative anti-Christmas voices when we do speak up. The reluctance to mention the origins of this much-loved holiday permeates early childhood learning programs and public schools. Modern scholars still debate to this day whether the December 25th may be or may not be the day of the birth … Christmas is the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, which, in western churches, is held annually on 25 December. Though many Americans can happily compartmentalize religious Christian observance and secularized Christmas cheer, not all of us have the luxury of doing so.For many of us, Christmas is not, and never has been, truly secular.