“People have a strange tendency to insist that Christmas cannot mean to you what, in fact, it does mean to you. Religious people are told that Christmas is really secular, and secular people that it is really religious. Christians are told it is pagan, and pagans are told it is Christian. Somehow the poor Christmas tree gets all these charges heaped upon it – it is, by turns, too religious, too secular, too pagan, and too Christian.”

- Timothy Larsen, The Many True Meanings of Christmas