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There are two Christmases. One is the Christian holy day, the other a Western cultural celebration full of snowmen, chestnuts, bright lights, eggnog, warm fires, giftwrap, pop songs and cheer.
There's no denying the cultural event has its origins in the Christian holiday. Still, the cultural side is no longer inextricably bound to the religious side, if it ever was.
Within Christianity there has long been tension between the spiritual meaning of the day and its secular celebration. To this day, there are Christians who worry the commercial and cultural elements that have attached themselves to the holiday represent a re-emergence of the day's pagan origins as a winter solstice ritual to coax back the disappearing sun.
Most of our cultural Christmas traditions date only to 19th-century Victorian England. The greeting "Merry Christmas," which has become so controversial on public signs and on the lips of government clerks and store cashiers, was popularized in the 1840s by Charles Dickens and by early greeting card makers. It comes originally from a 16th-century song, "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," which sounds more like a pub tune than a church hymn with its good-natured demand for figgy pudding and "a cup of good cheer" and its insistence that "we won't go until we get some."
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Merry X-mas to all have a great day!
