Say you love Santa: pop culture's war on secularists.

• Author: Beato, Greg

EVERY YEAR AT this time, as visions of nondenominational sugar plums dance in our heads, Christmas derives great spiritual power from candy cane bagels, reggae versions of "Silent Night," and Kwanzaa stockings hung by the chimney with care. Christians and heretics alike may decry the commercialization of the holidays, but when gift exchanges confer grace and delicious turkey dinners are the gateway to piety, it's easy to have faith. Almost everyone wants in on the action.

Everyone but Richard Dawkins, the patron saint of faithlessness. According to an article that ran in The New Fork Times last December, the author of The God Delusion celebrates Christmas for "family reasons" but apparently has even less reverence for Cindy Lou Who than he does for Baby Jesus. "I detest Jingle Bells, White Christmas, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and the obscene spending bonanza that nowadays seems to occupy not just December, but November and much of October, too," he told the Times.

Is there any more concise illustration of why most Americans would sooner send a gay Hindu divorcee to the White House than a nonbeliever? It's one thing to reject the Lord God Almighty, but Secret Santa too? Even in the bluest blue state, that qualifies as blasphemy.

Atheists have been enjoying a revival during the last few years. Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens have hit the bestseller lists with Bible-trumping tomes. All around the country, in an effort to counter the political and cultural clout of those who believe that every stem cell is God's own child and brontosauruses rode Noah's ark, nonbelievers are ramping up their advocacy and recruitment efforts.

The New York City Atheists produce three weekly public-access TV shows. The Rational Response Squad encourages atheists to make their nonbelief public by posting "blasphemous" videos on YouTube. In six locations in the United States and Canada, Camp Quest provides a setting where kids from nonreligious families can roast marshmallows in a rational, freethinking manner. Even old Ebenezer Dawkins has a website that sells buttons, T-shirts, and lapel pins emblazoned with an edgy scarlet A.

So why not just take the next seeker-friendly step and fully embrace the celebration of inclusive humanism and the purchase-driven life that Yuletime has mutated into ? Currently, alas, it's much harder to shop for the evangelical nonbelievers on your Christmas list than it is to shop for the devout.

Many Christians will...