The thing that MADE christmas a "high holy holiday" WAS the de-christianizing of the holiday.
Nobody really cared all that much about christmas until the lore of santa and presents gained popularity in the 1800s.
The popularity of christmas grew because of the commercialization. Everyone loves giving/receiving presents and having an excuse for a big family get together and meal. The fact that it was initially stolen from pegan holidays to celebrate the birth of jesus was tangential.
I'd suggest giving the wiki article on christmas a good read through [1]. The war on christmas is something made up to make christians mad. It's revisionist history to try and claim that "just a few years ago, christmas was all about jesus! But now it's all commercial". It hasn't been about Jesus since the 1820s. And, at that time, it was one of the less popular holidays.
Fun fact, christmas was at one point banned in england by the puritans because it was associated with drunkeness.
I’m also an atheist. But I was raised Christian, attended Christian private school for a few years, and have taken personal interest in understanding the faith and its underpinnings well past the time I lost my own faith.
It’s true that most of the religious aspects of Christmas have been diluted if not basically vanished from the holiday. But it’s far from a new truth. For most worshippers, the commercialization and secularization has been part of the holiday for at least half a century. It was Christians who either led this development or eagerly adopted it.
Among Christians who would object to that, more do not celebrate the holiday as a matter of their faith than seek to de-secularize it. This has never been part of the “War on Christmas” narrative.
That narrative has, alongside many other narratives like it, been an imagined victimization story that Christmas—in all its secularized form—is being “canceled” by things like saying “happy holidays” or merely including other religious holidays in greetings around the same time of year.
At first this was all very explicit, and probably for many a sincere reaction to feeling less centered in the universe. By the time “War on Christmas” became a phrase in any kind of common usage it had become a manipulative dog whistle to tell the people receptive to said manipulation that there’s another “attack” on them. It’s the same trajectory similar reactions to majority feelings of being less centered have been exploited for invented culture war bullshit.
This is just the inverse of how pre-secularized Christmas came to be. Christmas was never a Christian tradition, it’s always been a winter solstice celebration which was used as a (mostly subtler) cudgel to convert Pagans. If there ever was an attack on ritual celebration of Christ’s birth, it would have been that.
Moreover, Christmas isn’t and never has been the “high holy holiday” for devout Christians. That holiday is Easter, which celebrates the transition of Jesus as prophet to Christ, son of God, who died and was reborn to eternally absolve humanity of their sins. That holiday has likewise been commercialized and secularized and infused with Paganism.
But there’s no corresponding Easter War! Seems weird but… most Christians don’t (pardon) give a god damn.
It was never about the holiday. It was always about moral panic as a manipulation technique.
To me, a secular festival and significant religious event together are fabulous and enhance each other. I grew up in NYC and used to do the whole “Christmas in New York” thing. The overall atmosphere of celebration is a great way to close the year!
It must be so sad to sit around being miserable over Starbucks cups or whatever.
Think I'm being extreme? Just remember that the Bible says that Jesus was born during lambing season, which is in the Spring, so Christianity had to ignore its own texts to place it at the same time as the pagan Saturnalia festival.
They didn't feel the line was crossed when more Santa appeared more than Jesus, when Christmas trees appeared more than Nativity scenes, or when their kids couldn't wait to get up and open presents but didn't care about going to church that night. They only cared about the word "holidays", and likely only because talking heads on right-wing media decided to get them riled up about it.
It's a tempest in a teapot because getting people outraged gets them to keep tuning in.
Look at how Christianity itself is practiced by many of its adherents and compare that against the actual teachings of Jesus Christ. There is very little overlap there. Materialism is just one glaring example. The so-called followers of Christ are hardly following in his footsteps, and that is certainly not the fault of the left.
It's funny you mention that, because even as an Atheist I realize that Christmas as it exists today is almost completely secularized and has very little to do with Jesus Christ and the religion of Christianity. If you look at the celebrations and the iconography with an outsider's perspective, the holiday seems to be about Santa Claus and presents. I don't think any other major religion has had one of its holiest holidays commercialized and secularized to such an extent.
I'm no Christian, far from it actually, but I can see the merit behind their reaction. "War" is hyperbolic but I understand how they feel. Because it really does seem like their high holy holiday has been, and is continuing to be, de-Christianized.