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Notes -
There is definitely tension. The Santa Claus version of Christmas with the reindeer and the elves and the North Pole is the new, secular, version of the festival. And even that is being improved upon with Mrs. Santa Claus, black Santa Claus, you name it (I think I'm still waiting for mainstream gay Santa, why no Mr. and Mr. Claus yet? No "I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus"?*). The popular notion of Christmas is increasingly separate from the original Christian feast day. And yet they are still tangled together at the roots.
It's when those secular symbols get objected to, and insistence that you have to have the 'randomly chosen symbol from other faith or tradition' displayed alongside them or instead of them, that the murkiness sets in. Is Christmas a religious feast or a secular festival? Both? If we emphasise the secular festival, have we done away with the sectarian religious element?
If you're objecting to Santa because he's still Christian, then secular Christmas is not standing on its own, and claiming that this particular holiday is not uniquely Christian and so should be packed in with a grab-bag of "Happy Holidays" doesn't work. You can only have "Happy Holidays" if the festival being celebrated is, in effect, Yule (and long divorced from its original roots, and I don't count Wiccan/Pagan Yule as traditional) so it can be packaged alongside Kwanzaa and Hanukkah and any other scraped-together 'at the same date' festival from other traditions.
*Looks like the Norwegian postal service got there in 2021!
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