If you think about it, it is not exactly a massive spiritual renewal to rediscover that Christ and Christmas have something to do with one another, as desirable as even that may be. A priest I know remarked recently that, whether it knows it or not, every day the world counts time from Jesus' birth. The typical way of celebrating Christmas today is therefore not only a decline from the faith but a sheer loss of memory. The problem is not only a religious one. Since, as the current administration demonstrates, many presidents are best forgotten, the lost connection with even these secular luminaries means that the holiday is now notable mostly for being a day off work.
Memory loss is loss of humanity.
Anyone who has had a friend or relative with Alzheimer's knows how painful it is to see a living, breathing human being cut off from the human connections that make each of us who we are. Most developed societies today are not far from a kind of collective Alzheimer's. So far as we know, we are the only species in the universe that notes the passage of time and orients itself within the present and toward the future by remembering the past, the past both of the race and of our individual lives. The first gospel, St. Matthew's, begins the life of Jesus with a detailed genealogy that is intended to remind us not only of the long perspectives of salvation history but also of the specific details of Jesus' birth. Without particular parents and a personal history, He would not have been fully human.