During the days leading up to Thanksgiving (or up to Halloween), it was difficult not to notice the Christmas music playing in stores, decorations for sale and advertisements for Black Friday. In some places, you’re fortunate enough to find items for Chanukah, sometimes Kwanzaa. But even when retailers set up a generic “holiday” section within, items like colored string lights, fake holly and mistletoe, and pine trees are all associated with Christmas.

Despite the fact that Christmas is based in Christian beliefs and the better portion of the U.S. population identifies as some form of Christian, many seem wholly uninterested in the traditional background from which the holiday itself has sprung. Yes, there are plenty of Christians here who celebrate with church services and the well-known story of the birth of Jesus Christ.

But for each of them, there seems to be a growing number of people, Christian and otherwise, who view Christmas without the context of religion. It’s easy to “get into the Christmas spirit” with December decorations that, in the minds of many Americans, have little to do with baby Jesus chilling out in a manger, trees decked out in tinsel, lights, and ornaments that may have personal significance, bows and wreaths on front doors, light-up reindeer, candy canes, penguins and snowmen covering the front yard.

Regardless of the roots of such traditions, their function in the present resonates with Jean Baudrillard’s concept of the simulacrum. Many of these images have moved beyond their original Christian symbolism to stand simply as coverups for what they once represented, if not as purely independent images themselves, free of any relation to Christian concepts.

Despite the thrill that comes from seeing lights outside through the haze of your own breath condensing in the cold, we should consider the cultural backlash of holiday sentiment. Some might suggest that the explanation of the secularization of Christmas is rampant materialism and consumerism proponed by big business. This rings especially true this year, when retailers began advertising their Black Friday deals earlier than ever before in an effort to encourage enough spending to jolt the economy a little.

Christmas, for many, deals primarily with spending money on plane tickets and hotel rooms, on multitudes of expensive gifts and on large quantities of food. Americans are encouraged to celebrate the holiday in the interest of the U.S. economy.

The other reason for a secularization of Christmas lies in the cultural significance we place on its celebration in the United States. It has become a big American holiday from a big Christian one, and people who are neither Christian nor American face the potential scorn of their peers for forgoing Christmas, as if doing so is somehow “un-American.” Americans view even other Christmas celebrations in the context of their own, dominated by a fat, jolly guy leaping down chimneys with toys and a kid who just wants a Red Ryder BB gun without being told he’ll shoot his eye out.

People who explain that they aren’t Christian are still faced with questions like, “But you really don’t celebrate Christmas?” and “Diwali/Chanukah, is that like your Christmas?” Any holiday that deals with the potential giving of gifts becomes synonymous with Christmas.

In secularizing the holiday, it seems we’ve made the mistake of channeling its religious significance into nationalism – dangerous territory which no silly, contrived celebration like “Chrismahanukwanzakah” will bring us out from. We don’t question people who don’t celebrate Thanksgiving because we understand how strained family relationships can be. But Christmas is bigger than that because of its Christian majority roots. The fervor for the holiday has been channeled into a display of American support over the course of long years that drives even people who celebrate secularly to take offense when they hear “Happy Holidays!” instead of “Merry Christmas!”

Between those songs on the radio, decorations outside stores and houses, and the temporal placement of “winter break,” it’s difficult to opt out of Christmas festivities and not feel alienated in your own home. There’s nothing wrong with spending time with loved ones and exchanging meaningful presents, or feeling grateful for what you have. But in these postmodern times, we need to consider what nationalism obscures – the appreciation of all our little differences, and more importantly, the ability to live and let live.

Chelsea is a senior in English and creative writing and has recently found herself addicted to NPR.