When you think of Christmas, is it more likely to conjure up images of a lulling Jesus or a laughing Santa, gift-bearing wise men or bargain-hunting shoppers, a bright star in the East or blinking lights on the house?
For more and more Americans, a new survey shows, yuletide is seen as a cultural holiday, not a religiously rooted holy day. Indeed, the biblical Nativity story itself is finding fewer believers.
In a telephone survey of 1,503 adults nationwide released Tuesday, the Pew Research Center found that of the 90 percent of Americans who will celebrate Christmas this year, 55 percent will mark it as a religious holiday (down from 59 percent in 2013).