First of all, thank you for this informative piece.

Of course, the Nativity story Christians believe in today is a fabrication based on cherry-picked segments from the Gospels — which contradict one another in their accounts of the birth of Jesus. Add some plotline based on lyrics from popular Christmas songs like "We Three Kings" and "The First Noel" and we get the myth children are taught in Sunday school and portrayed in overblown pageantry as literal truth.

Meanwhile, with lights and trees and ads for Black Friday sales — John Travolta as a disco-dancing Santa Claus, really? — showing up on television the day after Halloween, it should be pretty hard for intelligent people to take this totally manufactured celebration seriously.