This is [Secular] America! And I'm going to say it: 'Merry Christmas!'

I'm an atheist but I observe Christmas without hesitation. It's a time of year when certain songs are played, certain movies and tee-vee specials are shown, certain foods are served, certain color schemes are favored, certain stories are repeated (public and private) -- and I like this. I enjoy the time off and the smell of Christmas trees, and within reasonable limits, I even enjoy gift shopping.

These days, I get to remember my youthful enthusiasm for Christmas through my son's eyes, and watch the experiences that will become his memories, and that makes it fun all over again.

My Christmas dislikes are both mild and unoriginal: I dislike the excess of consumerism, I resent seeing overt Christmas-themed advertising before Thanksgiving, I hate the stresses associated with mandatory family togetherness, and I tire of the fretting over retail sales numbers that get inserted into every news broadcast. Sometimes the mood I happen to be in is a poor fit for the overall tenor of the Christmas spirit, and sometimes this mood persists for days. And I have no use for eggnog or fruit cakes.

Whatever my small grudges about Christmas, they have nothing to do with religion. I freely say "Christmas" and "Merry Christmas," although I also shift between those and the supposedly ecumenical "holidays" and "happy holidays" according to whimsy. I don't dwell on the etymology, "Christ" + "mas," and I don't worry over whether I'm accidentally ingesting Jesus cooties by using the wrong words.

The true origins and history of the holiday barely enter my thinking, and don't strike me as particularly interesting. Whatever Christmas's origins, the combination of public and private meanings attached to it have developed according to no one's conscious plan, and will continue to do so. Christmas is what it is, and most of us like most of it, but we also choose what we love about it and what we put away. The Christians who want to "take it back" to some ideal, or box it in to some orthodoxy, are fooling themselves -- and they're boring the rest of us. And I can't think of any reason to let them spoil a perfectly good holiday, or even to speak of Christmas as though it is theirs to take back. It now belongs to everyone.

I think there's a lesson here for the Christianists, one that those of us in favor of keeping church separate from state have been pointing out from the start: you might succeed in forcing your symbols into the public square, and maybe even at taxpayer expense. But after they're in everyone's constant line of sight, you can't control what the symbols mean. You should be prepared for the meanings to take their own course, and you can expect not to like the results if you actually do care about the symbols. So be careful what you ask for.

And Merry Christmas.