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Can't you?
A recent commentary at CNN.com admonished "You can't take Christ out of Christmas." It was an odd mix, all in all, of things I agreed with and things that I thought were foolish. For instance, the writer, Roland S. Martin, like most of the self-stylized embattled Christians, objects to the phrases "Season's Greetings" and "Happy Holidays," which is strange since I remember both of those phrases being used long before there was much awareness of other people's holidays. Even for the Christian, there are likely to be multiple holidays worth noting--or don't they want to "wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy new year" any more? I've never heard anyone speak of a holiday tree, as he claims, but maybe I just am not hyper-sensitive to it or looking to be oppressed at every opportunity. Then he whines about "Xmas," showing his ignorance of his own religion's traditions: "Xmas" (and "Xianity") have been used as abbreviations since before there was a King James version of the Bible, documented at least as far back as the 1500s, and some scholars claim it goes back almost as far as the first century! This is no modern coinage to "take Christ out of Christmas," but I suppose if he needs to think so in order to feel oppressed in a nation that has a Christian majority, more power to him.
Now, it's true that I tend to think Christ can be profitably removed from Christmas, because I think in some ways it's become a cultural holiday. We're all surrounded by the trappings of Christmas--its decorations, its carols, its vacation time--that we tend to take a certain interest in Christmas whether we are religious or not. Further, as someone who knows a little something about history in general and the history of Christmas in particular, I take a bit of umbrage at the assertion that "Jesus is the reason for the season." Human beings held celebrations this time of year long before Jesus was born, never mind before he was mythologized. In Rome, it was the Saturnalia (later Sol Invictus). On the one hand, we've put away all of these stores for the winter and we want an excuse to use them while they're still relatively fresh, and on the other is that the days have gotten short and cold and we need a little cheer. The Bible nowhere indicates when Jesus was born (which is one of the reasons Puritans did not celebrate Christmas); it seems to have been placed on the date it was only to co-opt the popular holiday that already occupied the spot. So no, Jesus is not the reason for the season. Saturn might be, or Mithras, but really it's just an innate human need to come together, to celebrate, to create human warmth in the midst of terrestrial cold.
It took centuries, though, for Christianity to really take over the holiday, though. For centuries, the celebrations were largely Saturnalia with the name of Christmas: drunken revelries of misbehaving (which was the other reason Puritans didn't celebrate Christmas!). More on that project in a moment, however.
I said much earlier that there were some things about which I agreed with Mr. Martin. He decries the materialism of the season, with people running themselves into debt to decorate or light their lights, or get the hottest doo-dad for their kids, feeling like they've failed as parents if each Christmas isn't bigger and more expensive than the last, to say nothing of being bigger and more expensive than that of their children's friends. I agree that there are far more worthy things to be celebrated than consumerism: our families, our friends, our fellow human beings--in short, our human bonds. Spending time with those we love and strengthening our real relationships, giving our time or our money to the needy: I think Martin and I would agree that these are important things, but he seems to think those values have something to do with Jesus. They may very well, but they don't have to. Jesus, to me, isn't the important thing--people are.
Now, the ironic thing here is that it was largely the forces of capitalism that worked to reform Christmas from a drunken debauch to the family-centered day that we think of it as. Read Stephen Nissenbaum's The Battle for Christmas for the full story, but in essence, the capitalists created Christmas as we know it as a way to get a penny pinching populace under the purview of the Protestant work ethic to loosen their pocketbooks and start buying the products of our new industrial capacity in the Nineteenth Century. Without the forces of capitalism, Martin and his crew wouldn't have Christmas as a holy day upon which to project some golden age of "getting back to the true meaning of Christmas." The closest they would be coming would be to fight against a centuries-old tradition of misbehavior stretching back centuries or even millennia. Just another evil to lay at the feet of capitalism, I suppose....