The Beeb's Jane Little writes that while the Christmas wars may have eased in the U.S., they are going strong in Europe.
... In places like Britain, there have been mounting concerns about an "attack" on Christmas.
There are more stories than ever this year about local councils "banning" Christmas, schools refusing to put on Nativity plays, and complaints that Christmas cards are now devoid of any religious content.
And clergy continue to express anxiety about the rampant consumerism at this time, with hoards taking to the shops on London's Oxford Street to spend, spend, spend.
Now Pope Benedict has added his voice to the disquiet, telling pilgrims and tourists at his last weekly audience before Christmas that they must defend its true spirit.
He warned them that "false prophets continue to offer cheap salvation which ends in deep delusions".
The Pope's main concern is that secularisation is emptying Europe of its soul, that a Christian continent is losing ground to a wishy-washy "anything goes" morality or, in the Pope's famous words on the eve of his election last year, a "dictatorship of relativism".
The battle over Christmas is in fact connected to others over religious symbols which have become so prevalent - and so loaded - over the past year: from an employee's fight with British Airways which banned her from wearing a cross around her neck, to wider campaigns over a Muslim woman's right to wear a headscarf or full face covering.
Essentially, it is all part of a complicated negotiation over the meaning of a secular public square and an attempt to come to grips with a changing, more pluralistic society.
But the danger is that secular authorities, out of a fear of offending one group, end up offending almost everyone. They may regulate so much that all that is left is a grey mushy square so inoffensive and so utterly expressionless.