Nice strawman, but no, Christians don’t worship ornaments any more than Jews worship candles or Muslims worship rugs. Those are implements used in the worship of the Christian deity.
And Odin happily accepts little kids’ Elf reverence… 
Seriously - Xmas tree angels are implements for worshipping the Christian God? That’s the silliest thing I’ve heard all year.
If we stripped away all the Pagan rituals that the early Church implemented to make Pagans more comfortable with converting to Christianity, we wouldn’t HAVE Christianity - we’d have Judaism. But by all means, keep strawmanning.
…well, except for that little matter of the risen Christ.
That word doesn’t mean what you think it does. I’m not the one who in all seriousness listed Christmas tree toppers as actual, fully religious Christian icons.
Right, you insist that CHRISTmas is a celebration of consumerism (that’s why we call it Consumermas).
And the Confederate Flag is a celebration of Southern Pride, equally applicable to all Southerners black and white.
Look, I don’t deny that Christmas is plenty secularized. My wife and I are about to have a baby. I was raised Jewish (and still consider myself Jewish though I’m not at all religious). She was raised Catholic (and totally rejects that faith and anything to do with it). We are going to raise our kid not to be religious at all. Yet we will celebrate both my holidays and hers.
But neither of us is under the illusion that the holidays we’re celebrating are religious in nature, even if we personally aren’t focused on that aspect. That’s just delusional.
I think you mean “aren’t”, there.
And you don’t see the disconnect between you celebrating the holiday secularly (as so many do), and yet insisting it’s actually super religious?
And that Southern Pride analogy is still nonsensical…
What contradiction? It’s a religious holiday, however we choose to go about celebrating it. Nobody here is saying that “every single person who celebrates Christmas is devoutly religious”, that would obviously not be a true statement.
If someone celebrates Columbus Day by taking the day off work and doesn’t think about Columbus or who he was once during that day, does that mean Columbus Day isn’t a white colonial holiday?
We clearly disagree about what “religious holiday” means. For me, it means religious practice is the overwhelming point of the holiday, and occupies a significant part of the time spend celebrating the holiday. That is no longer the case with Christmas - or Saint Valentine’s Day, to pick another example. Or would you argue St V’s is also still a religious holiday?
Did it used to be celebrated by burning a Carib in effigy? It’s a White colonial celebration by the very fact of its existence and name, since that and a day off is all there is to it for most US celebrants.
Christmas has a religious name, but the celebration of it extends way beyond that. Your comparison will make sense if there’d ever been more to Columbus day than a day off for most people. Or less to Christmas now than all the shopping and feasting and sappy movies and lights all over the house and plastic reindeer on the roof…
I haven’t heard much in the way of Christian Hymns, just secular seasonal songs.
Angels are also part of the OT.
They did nothing of the sort. Christmas, before Charlemagne was a minor Saints day, like dozens and dozens of others.
By the time Christmas was a big deal, there really weren’t any pagans. Just a lot of “folk” traditions left over from Paganism, whose pagan meaning had been long forgotten.
So are Thanksgiving and Halloween then.
Thanksgiving is an American national holiday with religious (specifically Christian) overtones. Halloween is a Christian holiday yes.
We discussed all this in detail either last year or the year before, and showed that it’s not the case. Christmas was well established as a major Christian celebration centuries before Charlemagne. And as the celebration of Christ’s birth, not ‘a minor saint’. Charlemagne made no difference to Christmas celebrations.
But if you want to discuss this, please look up some cites and start another thread, as it’s far off topic here.
No, indeed, I proved my case. But next month, please start a new thread.
I guess if you have an entrenched position, you have to defend it at all costs, no matter how patently ridiculous the defences you must muster. Tell us how Valentine’s Day is a religious holiday next.
All Hallow’s Eve/All Saint’s Eve/ Reformation Day are Christian holidays. Halloween, the modern holiday, is a secular one.
There’s a difference between the religious origin of a holiday and how it’s celebrated now. How many people go to church on Halloween / All Hallows’ Eve?
Christmas celebrations differ from country to country.
Christmas is a big deal in Japan, with zero Christian connection or content. In Russia, New Year is the big midwinter celebration, and Christmas (on Jan 7) is a purely religious holiday, observed only by serious churchgoers.
In the US it’s a political issue whether Christmas is a Christian holiday or not. Just as Columbus Day / Indigenous People’s Day is a political issue.
You guys are dumbfounding. Of course the celebrations of Halloween or St Valentine’s Day are pretty much completely secularized, but yes, they are still Christian holidays.
Is Hanukkah a non-Jewish holiday? After all, in origin it’s actually a national holiday for the Hashmonean dynasty of Judea, and it’s not mentioned in the Bible. I guess from now on I’ll just insist that it’s a completely secular holiday 
Fish cannot see the water they swim in, I suppose.
If they’re ‘pretty much completely secularized’, and celebrated by people of other faiths, and by people of no faith, in ways that have nothing at all to do with Christianity, then I don’t see how you can call them Christian any more – even if a few Christians still celebrate them as religious holidays.
Just because a holiday originated as a Christian celebration, it doesn’t mean it still is. How much Christian devotion do you see on Valentine’s Day? 
Totally different thing, because it’s only celebrated by Jews. In fact, it’s become important to Jews as an alternative to Christmas, and has become conflated with Christmas to some extent. Hanukkah gifts, Hanukkah decorations, and Hanukkah parties for example.
Are they though? My Jewish family did not celebrate Halloween (though sometimes I’d go trick or tricking with friends, raised in Christian families). We did not celebrate Valentine’s Day. My Jewish friends growing up were in the same boat.
The people who DID celebrate those holidays came from Christian families. Maybe they hadn’t been to Church in 10 years, maybe they weren’t believers in Christianity, but they still held on to Christian cultural ideas like Valentine’s Day or Halloween.
It is celebrated by fully secular Jews, who never go to synagogue and don’t believe in God. Just like Halloween or Valentine’s Day are celebrated by fully secular people of Christian culture, who may not go to church or believe in God (or Jesus), but still celebrated Christian holidays.
Why is the secular Jewish person who celebrates Hanukkah proof that Hanukkah is only celebrated by Jews while the fully secular Christian person is somehow proof that Halloween is celebrated by all?
It’s so rare to see actual cognitive dissonance so openly on display in one sentence. The bolded bits can’t both be true.
Oh come on. Like Judaic religious practice is confined to what’s in the Tanakh, and the Talmud is of no moment? Talk about reaching…