People also tend to overlook the fact that the "national Christmas traditions" are Victorian Anglophile traditions, not Christian ones.

A Mexican or Italian Christmas celebration, for instance, looks quite different from the Anglo Christmas traditions people believe are "Christian". There are no generic Christian traditions of Christmas, they are culturally based upon ethnic traditions, especially when it comes to food and customs of the celebrations (like whether one celebrates Christmas Eve or Christmas Day or St. Nicholas Day or St. Lucia Day, etc).

Irish Christians historically didn't do much of anything for Christmas. In Scotland, the Christians focused their winter celebration on Hogmanay, or the new year celebration.

This whole "Christian Christmas" thing in the US in the past 30 or so years has been a backlash against the growing diversity of American culture, and the challenges to the Anglo American Protestant and Roman Catholic American attempts to impose and merge their hierarchies' standardized set of "American Christmas traditions" with the capitalist and secularist traditions.

Phooey to that, I say.