I took you, perhaps wrongly, to mean you were washing your hands of Christmas completely: The un-Christian elements are actively unwelcome, and the Christian ones simply irrelevant, but everything about the season falls into one category or the other and you seemed to be expressing distaste for both. I'm not a big fan of atheism, but I don't begrudge it its place in the market place of ideas. I also don't mind if people are categorically disgusted by Christmas traditions legitimate and otherwise and want no part of them. What I take issue with is the need to seize Christmas as an opportunity to premptively TELL everyone who does enjoy the holiday how offensive it is and how much better cynical sulking is than all that ridiciulous Pollyanna "brotherly love" crap that so nauseates them. I'm not one of the people so worried that an inoffensive ecumenical "Happy Holidays" will somehow dilute or diminish Christmas and render it less merry. Yet I am weary of folks both refusing to be merry, happy or anything else, ESPECIALLY during Christmas, AND resenting any suggestion we interrupt our miserable hatefulness with a week or two of human decency.

No, we shouldn't but, again, that we do is a fault that lies not in Christmas but in ourselves. Which, if I'm not mistaken, is one of the core messages of Christmas that has very much to do with Jesus Christ. If you're arguing we should treat each other with respect and compassion every day instead of just at Christmas I agree wholeheartedly, but if you're arguing we should stop kidding ourselves and be SOBs year 'round, may I suggest you establish a holiday for that around mid-April and leave Christmas to people who enjoy it. If you want no part, no one's gonna hunt you down and shove a fruitcake down your throat, but it doesn't seem too much to expect equal courtesy.