I guess you could use a snowflake or a cornucopia or something as a generic 'winter holiday' thing, and people have been doing that for awhile; "Happy Holidays" usurped "Merry Christmas" decades ago. Or you could use a bevy of emojis representing the holiday's secular roots, but would it have been better if they added emojis for St. Nick's mythological companions like Belshnickel, Zwarte Pete, and Krampus next to the santa hat? Maybe if they really wanted to polish this essential feature for production use, they could have different emoji sets for different holidays and a modal to choose which one you wanted.
I dunno, I feel so bad for people who haven't had the drive to do anything fun or playful beaten out of them yet. "Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that's the inheritor of our fear."
There are people who find "Happy Holidays" offensive, as they consider it part of the manufactured war on Christmas.
I guess this is why politics and holidays don't mix!
Gift giving around the end of the year has been around since before 0 BC.
(And before someone screams "citation needed," I'll just say that it's well known, and if you didn't know it by now, there's a thing called Google and Wikipedia that you can go look at.)
Lots of beliefs are "well known" and nevertheless wrong. Just look at all the people, even in this thread, claiming that Santa Claus was invented by Coca Cola, even though a simple google image search will reveal illustrations of Santa from before Coco Cola was founded. As for the pagan traditions around new years they are not very well documented and a lot is speculation.
Of course gift-giving is known throughout history, but the figure of Santa Claus is associated with the Christian celebration. I'm pretty sure you wont find any reference to Santa Claus or Father Christmas from before Christianity!
So? Most religious traditions were stolen, whoop de do. What matters is how they're practiced in 2019, in which case Christmas is almost synonymous with Christianity.
> I'll just say that it's well known
There is no actual confidence in how all of this stuff came to be, just a lot of conjecture - and so no, it's not well known at all.
Christianity has no monopoly on Christmas.
You see similar things going on for Valentine's day, Easter, Saint Patricks day, etc. Sure, there is a religious aspect, but the non-religious celebration is dominant.
My colleagues in India had a Christmas celebrations in their office. I asked them if they celebrated it growing up, and they told me they first started celebrating it in University.
We have Diwali parties in our US office. Everyone has fun.
As a symbol of American capitalism it's rather fitting that Microsoft are using him.
St Nicholas (sinterklaas) is celebrated in The Netherlands on 6th of December. You may remember it from The Daily Show and other US TV outlets who were covering the archaic tradition of black face in the celebrations.
Of course he's religious, it's a mascot for a Christian holiday. Don't confuse American commercialism's exploitation of Christmas & Santa with its religious roots.