Yes, we should!! This is exactly how it happens here in Switzerland – and there are less and less Christians.

This year it’s Festivus complete with spaghetti and the “Airing of the grievences”. Having a big party next weekend.

We have lights on our house and I decorate the inside with snowmen.

I was raised as an atheist and we always had xmas, but the only thing I knew about was santa.

We sang songs in elementary school like “silent night” and i swear I thought the whole manger stable story was, well, just a story.

Religion doesn’t register unless someone explains it.

Ahhh…I miss MY Amb!en. The stuff I have now doesn’t work nearly as well as Amb!en used to-before it quit working for me. The filter won’t let me write Amb!en. How come Dave got away with it?

Yule, Yule tree, the 12 days of Yule, Merry Yule, etc.

http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?s=yule&gwp=13

“Many of the symbols and motifs associated with the modern holiday of Christmas are derived from traditional pagan northern European Yule celebrations. The burning of the Yule log, the decorating of Christmas trees, the eating of ham, the hanging of boughs, holly, mistletoe, etc. are all historically practices associated with Yule. When the Christianization of the Germanic peoples began, missionaries found it convenient to provide a Christian reinterpretation of popular pagan holidays such as Yule and allow the celebrations themselves to go on largely unchanged, versus trying to confront and suppress them. The Scandinavian tradition of slaughtering a pig at Christmas (see Christmas ham) is probably salient evidence of this. The tradition is thought to be derived from the sacrifice of boars to the god Freyr at the Yule celebrations. Halloween and Easter are likewise assimilated from northern European pagan festivals.

English historian Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (“Ecclesiastic History of the English People”) contains a letter from Pope Gregory I to Saint Mellitus, who was then on his way to England to conduct missionary work among the pagan Anglo-Saxons. Pope Gregory suggested that converting heathens would go easier if they were allowed to retain the outward forms of their traditional pagan practices and traditions, while recasting those traditions spiritually towards the Christian God instead of to their pagan “devils”: “to the end that, whilst some gratifications are outwardly permitted them, they may the more easily consent to the inward consolations of the grace of God”.”

This new age idea that a religious symbol can be turned into a secular symbol, for the benefit of…someone…is silly. It’s dishonest. It’s a “Christmas Tree,” and any attempt to secularize it is a lame attempt to violate state/church separation. That’s in the public sphere, but since they’re all symbols of a kind, it’s all related.

Like a cross, Christians want a symbol of death, so they kill a tree to glorify it. Like deer hunters treat deer. It’s neither logical nor helpful.

Should we be embracing Christmas as a secular holiday?

No! We should call a spade a spade. Christmastime is a time of great gluttony. I personally want no part of it.

Atheists should do a better job of picking their battles. Campaign against faith-based government initiatives, and the lack of political power and recognition.

On a lighter note, I did ask the wife, “Who is going to put the fairy on the tree this year?”
She replied, “It is not a fairy, it is an angel!”
“What’s the difference?” I said. The story always brings guffaws from my atheist friends.