(posing as a cynic)

Not a problems really, letting kids out of school for christmas, lets face it, in US, christmas is a secular holiday, all about gift (or one could say all about shopping) and it no longer is a religios one.

some old die hards still remember the christian religious underpinnings, but in an other couple of hundred years, it christmas as a religious holiday in US will be as quaint as All Hallows Eve!