Christmas for non-Christians

For most of my life, Christmas has been spent quietly eating Chinese food and watching movies--a fairly typical Christmas day for a Jewish family in Pennsylvania.  And not much has changed now that I live in California and the family members I live closest to are Chinese.  Christmas still involves, well, Chinese food.  Except that it's better Chinese food than before!

The only ingredient that's new is my in-laws' relaxed attitude about secular and pagan Christmas traditions:  the eggnog, the tree...the presents.

Aside from one uber-Christmas spent as an exchange student in Belgium, this is the first time I've gotten Christmas presents.  Why is it that my in-laws are completely unthreatened by these decidedly non-religious trappings of Christmas while I, and most of the other Jews I know, are made uncomfortable by them?

Not a Christmas elf!