I suppose it is complicated: seems ok, even nice, if people have hot-dog and drinks stands and what not for a festive, seasonal, Christmas market. But, obviously, the city has to permit that in the first place, thus condoning a religious festival. How was Diwali where you live, this year? Extra bad if there are crosses, Christmas trees, icons, Santas, and so on in public places. Everybody likes a party, but not necessarily a (quasi)religious party. Mardi Gras is an interesting experience, too.
A Christian friend of mine, who voted for Harris, was grumbling about Christian Nationalists ruining the brand and I pointed out that they were long on “Nationalist” and short on “Christian” rather like National Socialists were short on “Socialist.”
That’s a pretty broad brush.
I live in a Catholic region. I have Lutheran and Episcopalian friends. Heck, i have friends who are evangelical Christians who left the Republican party because of Trump.
Maybe that’s why I’m not avoiding Christmas parties this winter. But it’s not fair to blame all Christians for our political woes any more than it’s fair to blame all members of any other diverse group.
Per your note, and leaving out the recent election, and speaking only for the august me, myself and I…
I think one of the problems is that even as a majority-secular holiday that it’s become, the wide embrace of the holiday is still a part of pushing a very dominant religion’s iconology on the rest of the population.
And if you do push back, then you get targeted as one of the people declaring “War on Christmas”. YES, I’ll grant that some of the complaints on that are less strident than in the past, but that’s in no small part because many state governments have already pushed waaaay past that point to forcing Religion into schools and public life.
IE the Right literally WON that War, and is moving on to ever more theocratic battles. Note, I said the Right - not Christians. Because while I’m not sure which faction is using the other, the legal constructs are being pushed by the MAGA party, theoretically on behalf of their Christian constituents.
So, yeah, as I said, especially given my surroundings, that it makes me uncomfortable. Because despite the honest of goodwill of many, even most of the people around me, it’s still one of the ongoing assimilation efforts and the consequences of resisting it are getting higher every day.
I, too, remember when I was little. My dad would take me to the basement to open the little door on the chimney so Santa could get in. My mom cooked a huge dinner, or we went to Grandma’s. It was fun, magical, and exciting. I shared a lot of that with my kids when they were growing up.
I celebrate the spirit of light in the darkest part of the year. I’m not letting a bunch of angry, ugly, hateful, people spoil that for me and mine. I’m an Atheist, but I still enjoy my completely secular Christmas.
Funny story about Chinese buffets: We used to have one in this town. However, the Chinese owners were some sort of evangelical Christians. I remember the man had a bumper sticker that read, “I get my reward in heaven.” The real twist though? The place got shut down, and they got busted for tax evasion. You know like that kind of good christion. 
Concur. I’ll continue as I’ve been doing, ignoring it as best I can, but that’s going to be more difficult this year – my in-laws, who used to live in the town right next to ours, moved to Philly, and my wife is talking about driving down there…
I’m reminded of how my mother once told me she didn’t tell people she was Christian because she didn’t want them to be afraid of her.
Not my point at all. I didn’t say all Christians were Evangelicals, I said that the Evangelicals had taken control of the “brand”. When people in the US talk about Christian politics, they almost always mean Evangelical Christians; other sects are simply treated as nonexistent. They aren’t even condemned, just treated as nonexistent.
I recall how often I saw that during the debate over same sex marriage. Every time somebody talked about the “religious perspective”, it was the Evangelical Christian perspective. When somebody mentioned that their own religion had a different view they weren’t even argued with; just ignored.
I wasn’t disagreeing with you, but reflecting on the OP in light of your observation. Yes, a nasty strain of evangelical Christianity has claimed the brand, and that’s really unfair to all the other Christians out there, which happens to include all the people likely to invite me to Christmas festivities.
(And it’s not just “Christianity” they have coopted. People are often surprised when i point out that neither Judaism nor Islam have the hard objection to abortion that is currently promoted by some branches of Christianity. Judaism requires an abortion to save the life of the mother, and i believe Islam is okay with abortion prior to quickening.)
As I reported in the weeks before the election, on a busy street corner right by the LDS temple here in Mesa appeared a sign,
Protect God’s Constitution
NO KINGS
Vote Democratic
with a gold crown askew atop the K in Kings
No idea who put it there but it sounded evangelical to me.
I apologize for what turned out to be a hijack, it wasn’t intended as such.
I’ve stayed away for a couple of days, and I guess that was a good thing. There’s something I’m struggling to articulate, but it doesn’t belong in this thread.
Before I got engaged to my nominally Christian (now atheist) wife I didn’t pay attention to Christmas at all. When I was in grad school I sometimes went to my office, because it was nice and quiet.
After that I adopted her tradition, which was purely secular. No problems. It was kind of a family potlatch. The closest thing we came to religion was that my wife and mother-in-law took the kids to the local church to hear Christmas music on Christmas Eve so that her father and I could move the presents from the attic to the basement to make them easier to get to when we put them under the tree.
It was easy for my wife since I could buy into their tradition, not having one of our own. Both our sons-in-law have bought into ours also, the German one because his mother was far away and the other one because his parents were idiots.
So Christmas for me is all about giving presents and food.
I like the twinkly, festive lights too.