All this celebration of winter threw me off. For starters, the winter concert took place 10 days before the winter solstice. What’s more, why all the celebrating? Most of my neighbors here in Washington hate winter. Around here, the merest hint of snow sends people into a panic. Toilet paper and milk become more precious than gold or even Playstation 2. And why are the Fairfax County public schools making such a fuss about the fact that, thanks to the Earth’s tilt and orbit around the Sun, the Sun’s rays are hitting the northern hemisphere more directly?

Okay! Enough of being coy. What’s going on is that my son’s school doesn’t want to use the word "Christmas" or anything remotely religious. But "the holiday formerly known as Christmas" is too long and "Seinfeld" already copyrighted "Festivus." So, they are left with celebrating the possibility of freezing rain and slush.

It would be simpler to disregard the subject altogether. But as is so often the case in religious matters, our culture wants it both ways. It wants the benefits of religious observance and practice without the religious content. And at no time is this double-mindedness more clearly on display than at Christmas.

For instance, Christmas is a federal and state holiday. Government offices are closed and employees get paid leave. But some branches of government work overtime acting as if that weren’t the case. In addition to circumlocutions such as "winter break," there are what I’ve come to call the annual "crèche follies." For the past two decades, the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, have spent a lot of time and mental energy figuring out to what extent public institutions and facilities can acknowledge the Christian origins of the "holiday formerly known as Christmas."

The paradigm of these follies is the Supreme Court’s decision in Lynch v. Donnelly (1984). In Lynch, the Court ruled that the city of Pawtucket, Rhode Island’s nativity scene passed constitutional muster. Why? Because the city’s officials had taken sufficient care to make sure that no onlooker would ever be forced to consider what Linus Van Pelt said was the "true meaning of Christmas." How did they pull it off? They diluted the religious content by surrounding the Nativity scene with, among other things, "a Santa Claus house, reindeer pulling Santa’s sleigh, candy-striped poles, a Christmas tree ... a clown, an elephant ... a teddy bear" and "a large banner that [read] ‘SEASONS GREETINGS.’"

The problem with striving to protect people from considering the origins of Christmas is that there is no predicting what will cause people to make undesired religious associations. Case in point: the city manager of Eugene, Oregon. A few weeks ago, Jim Johnson decided that the generic seasonal celebration in politically-correct Eugene was still too sectarian. In a five-page memo, Johnson proclaimed the need for a truly "neutral" celebration. So, he banned the use of Christmas trees — that’s right, Christmas trees — at municipal facilities and public building — including, at least for a while, the senior citizens center. It didn’t matter that there isn’t anything specifically Christian or even religious about decorating a Scotch Pine or Frasier Fir with tinsel, lights, and ornaments. What mattered is that when Johnson looked at the O’ Tannenbaum and saw its lovely branches, he thought of Christianity.

While Johnson’s actions were too much for even a progressive town like Eugene, they do point out the lengths to which our culture will go not to be reminded that Christmas is a Christian holiday, which it undeniably is. And if acknowledging the Christian origins of Christmas causes our culture such conniptions, why not de-emphasize it? Why not give it back to those Christians whose feast it was? There are two reasons. The first is money. Stated baldly, our culture can’t afford to have December 25 be just another day.

Consumer spending makes up two-thirds of gross domestic product (GDP). And the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas accounts for one-third of all retail sales, as well as fifty percent of all retailers’ profits. Stated differently, Christmas fuels a significant part of our economy. If December 25 were like any other day, or even like any other national holiday, it would be difficult to imagine all of this buying and selling taking place. Think of the other national holidays — ones that don’t carry Christian or religious significance. Do people go from store to store searching for the perfect Memorial Day gift? Does anyone remind us of how many shopping days are left until Labor Day?

While the commercialization of Christmas is a distortion of the meaning of Christmas, like all distortions, it contains a grain of truth: something about Christmas causes people to believe that giving gifts to others, including people they don’t like, is a good thing. As Father Richard John Neuhaus has written: "Despite the catechetical deficit in contemporary Christianity, I expect most people are more or less aware that [all the exchanging of gifts] has to do with God’s extravagant gift of the Redeemer."

They’re also aware of what the angels proclaimed that first Christmas — which brings me to the second reason we’re loathe to treat December 25 as just another holiday, complete with mattress and car sales. The words "peace on Earth and goodwill toward men" rattle around the back of our brains. So we wish each other well this time of year. We try to be kinder to each other. And it goes beyond words. Charities, and not just the Christian ones, receive a large part of their donations around Christmas. While some of it — if we insist on being cynical — may be due to tax-planning, most of it is a product of the generosity we rightly believe is part and parcel of Christmas. Or, as President Clinton said last week, "a gift [Jesus] was given to us, and we, in turn should give to others."

The president may have wanted to check with White House lawyers before saying that. But his words at the National Building Museum make it clear: we can’t afford to live in a world where there’s nothing unique about December 25 — nor would we want to. That’s why the culture isn’t content to let Christmas become an exclusively religious holiday like Easter or Yom Kippur. But Christian beliefs about what happened on Christmas — that God came down from heaven to live as one of us at a particular place and time — offend American sensibilities. Such claims are exclusive. They suggest that there’s something unique and final about the Christian gospel. It’s the opposite of what so many Americans believe about spiritual matters. So, while Americans need Christmas, many try to obscure its message and its symbols. They fight to ban crèches on public property, and invent new names for what we’re celebrating.

But despite the double-mindedness and obfuscation, the meaning of Christmas is never completely obscured. Whether it’s the president’s words or the lyrics to the Christmas carols we hear at the supermarket, we are always being reminded of what all the fuss is really about — which makes me regard things like "winter concerts" and "winter break" more with sadness than anger. Denying the obvious can make you look pretty silly. And, as far as holidays go, I’d prefer something like Festivus to a celebration of taking my heavy coat out of storage.