Anyone who has recently been browsing on the John Lewis website will have noticed a little festive touch. Nothing too gaudy or offensive, just...unavoidable.

“Give someone a Christmas they’ll never forget” – the ironically forgettable slogan of the department store’s Christmas advertising campaign – dominates the front page alongside links to Christmas hampers, Christmas trees, Christmas jumpers and Christmas toys.

And, lest we forget, there’s the all-important opportunity to watch the Christmas TV advert (although, who hasn’t already seen – and passed judgment on – the hare and the bear?). Who is so worried about missing the TV advert of the season that they rush to the JL homepage to hit ‘play’? Oh... you? You haven’t seen it? Right. I’ll just wait here then.

Then there’s the A-Z of Christmas. I thought I’d have a quick bet with myself whether any of the following traditionally festive words would appear: perhaps ‘J’ for Jesus, ‘N’ for Nativity, or ‘H’ for Holy? Brace yourselves. No. ‘J’ is actually for jewellery, jigsaws and juicers (naturally), ‘N’ for nail-art, Nintendo and nightwear, ‘H’ for handbags, hampers and home spas. Doesn’t that just sum up the most wonderful time of the year?

This isn’t going to be yet another middle-aged rant at the commercialisation of Christmas, or a Scrooge-like grumble about how early the council put up the twinkling fairy lights. I’m no Grouch: I love Christmas. I love the community feel, the festive light and colour, being with my family, food, fireplaces. It isn’t Christmas, per se, that I’ve got it in for, it's the...philosophical ramifications, if that isn't too strong a term. And I don't think it is.

The following is hardly earth-shattering, but bear with me. In the UK, 60 percent of the popula-
tion is Christian and 25 percent are not religious. 85 percent of the population do not regularly attend a place of worship (for clarification, ‘regular’ means once a month) which means that – taking into account other religious denominations – there’s a sizeable proportion of self-defined Christians who perhaps go to a chapel evensong now and then; those who go to mass at Easter and Christmas; watch Carols from King’s on the telly; but struggle reciting the Creed off by heart and are unlikely to know anyone getting angry about teaching evolution rather than Creationism.

For this reason, the Christmas that we celebrate here in Britain is profoundly different to, say, Spain (where I live), and even America. As you would imagine there is a lot more religious imagery in the Spanish Christmas than the British one. In America, however, where a staggering 80 percent of the population is Christian; 40 percent attend church at least once a week; and half of all Americans would reject the theory of evolution, most retailers have almost completely censored the word Christmas, replacing it with the generically tolerant Holiday. As you can imagine, there’s quite a few Americans who wouldn’t call themselves fans of that rebranding; especially the hilarious attempt by the White House to describe their ostentatious decorations – think at least one lavishly decorated 8-foot Douglas fir per room– as ‘Holiday trees’. A particularly Captain Obvious quote from a former Miss America deigned to uncover the conspiracy, declaring emphatically on prime time TV: “Everyone knows that an evergreen tree decorated with lights and ornaments in December is a Christmas tree.” Classic. It seems to me that, in their respectable attempt to divide religion and the state, American politicians have failed to recognise that ‘cultural tolerance’ is less about ignoring people’s religions and more about celebrating them. Well...the concept of 'tolerating' anyone is actually more akin to ignoring them than celebrating them but, um, that's the fault of whoever coined such an awful way of expressing multiculturalism.

Moving back to the frankly less entertaining European perspective on the Yuletide, Christmas in England seems almost devoid of any relationship to the church. Personally, Christmas can be defined as: fighting over decorating the tree, Santa, telly, eating too much, family, presents and paper crowns that always tear because mum went for the cheapest crackers. More recently, Christmas has become synonymous with parties, drinking and, inevitably, wearing your choice of a) santa hat b) reindeer antlers c) tinsel. What, then, is Christmas for?

I remember a few of years ago being mortified when I accidentally wished a very good friend of mine, who I knew very well was Jewish, a “Merry Christmas”. I immediately retracted my statement and, back-pedalling wildly, managed to stammer out, “No, gosh, I’m sorry, obviously I meant Hanukkah, I-I-I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Sorry.” Before I had even started my pathetic bumbling, however, she had grinned, replied with a genuine “Merry Christmas to you” and reached out for a hug. An awkward silence hung on the air for a second before she clarified, “I’m not offended.Why would I be?” She was right. Holidays are fundamentally linked by the purpose they serve: to bring together the community for celebration and reflection. After all, she knew that my Christmas was hardly the most evangelistic affair. I have a decorated tree and gift-giving; she has a decorated bush and gift-giving. We were basically reading from the same page, albeit from a different book.

Perhaps it’s offensive to have such a pick-and-mix attitude to religion; taking all the fun parts like love, family, sharing and goodwill and forgetting the whole bloody Crusades, heathen-converting thing. Obviously Christmas is much more meaningful to those who are actually celebrating the birth of Jesus. It’s a powerful and resonating message of love, forgiveness, patience, compassion – in fact most of the basic human values we hold dear. It seems that Christmas has evolved into a day of acknowledging the elements of traditional religion that we still want in our lives, rather than vehemently rejecting the parts we don’t.

The biggest complaint we’ll all hear at this time of year is the fact that Christmas, which is just as important to Christians as Rosh Hashanah is to Jews, and Eid is to Muslims, has been hijacked by companies to sell products – the classic commercialisation of Christmas. To complain about commercialisation, however, is deliciously ironic. The commercialisation of Christmas is aimed at the commercially-minded; I'm thinking Santa-Christians, rather than Jesus-Christians. Companies and department stores aren’t dragging people out of church on a Sunday, kicking and screaming. They provide what the modern, Western, quasi-secular Christmas is all about: excess. Shameless decorating; too much food and drink; presents for all the family; hours spent in pyjamas watching Love Actually and Elf. Christmas is a blow-out celebration, something to look forward to during the bleak winter months. Sounds cynical, but it’s not. I literally cannot wait.