Not anymore at least. Now it's all about buying stuff and crap. Of course it's all cool, but it's commercialized, and people don't even know what it's about anymore.
It has never been. Christmas was essentially how Christians stole several pagan traditions at the Winter Solstice to make it more easy to convert people.
I personally think buying stuff is better than celebrating a
n ideology religion. I think there are other ways to view the giving gifts part than as a capitalist idea. I like the idea of giving presents to other people, as long as it doesn't mean that all you care for is only getting presents yourself. The fact that so many people only think of the "getting presents" aspect of the holidays, ignoring the part where we equally give presents, makes me think they're slightly ironic in their critic, because it makes it look, at least to me, that they've become exactly what they are against, people who lust for presents and don't care the slightest about giving presents to other people.
But the best part of the season is of course spending time with the rest of your family
minus the hateful ones and all those strange and wierd but cozy and fun things you do, like placing a huge pinetree in the middle of your living room, decorating it with lots of wierd stuff etc.
I don't see exactly what the commercialization of the holidays has ruined. Just stop buying presents for each other?
I don't see how it makes it any harder for you to spend time with your family etc. Even if someone wants to celebrate the myth of it being a Christian holiday, I don't see how it destroys it for them.
But you said people don't even know what it's about anymore. I agree, because most people think it's about the birth of Jesus. Which is exactly false. It isn't. Jesus wasn't born during the Winter Solstice. December 25th was the original time of the Winter Solstice (but now it's 21st due to the Julian Calender being stupid
). And that time was a time celebrated in most places in the northern hemisphere of Earth, in many different cultures, traditions and religions. As I mentioned in another topic, in Denmark, we call it Jul (similar to the English "Yule"). Jul has become far more christianized than commercialized, if anything, to the point where the traditions is on the brink of having it's history forgotten by most people. And ignorance is, of course, the best tool religions have when rewriting history in their favor.