"Just Leave Christmas Alone",
says Krauthammer, in yesterday's WaPo,a nd I agree with him,

To insist that the overwhelming majority of this country stifle its religious impulses in public so that minorities can feel "comfortable" not only understandably enrages the majority but commits two sins. The first is profound ungenerosity toward a majority of fellow citizens who have shown such generosity of spirit toward minority religions.

The second is the sin of incomprehension -- a failure to appreciate the uniqueness of the communal American religious experience. Unlike, for example, the famously tolerant Ottoman Empire or the generally tolerant Europe of today, the United States does not merely allow minority religions to exist at its sufferance. It celebrates and welcomes and honors them.

Wednesday The Anchoress was writing about Christmas and the Holy Name:

In our age and in our wisdom, better we should turn away from the stores not in anger, but in contemplation. There are ten days left before Christmas. I cannot bring myself to spend those days shaking a fist and looking for ways to be insulted. They don't want to say "Christmas?" They don't want to utter the Holy Name? I'm not surprised - we are living in a distracted and deeply darkened world. Better I should suffer a bit for His name, rather than foist it on those who will only spit it back.

Cast not pearls before swine, nor give Holy Things to the dogs. Let the secular world keep its secular "holidays." We, like Scrooge, are meant to keep Christ-mas in our hearts, all the year.

Lileks asks, "Come on! It's Christmas! What's the problem?" Michael's a little more direct (take a look at the alerts!).
Dr Krauthammer gets the last word,

it is time that members of religious (and anti-religious) minorities, as full citizens of this miraculous republic, transcend something too: petty defensiveness.

Merry Christmas. To all.