If you were pressed to come up with one symbol representing Christmas, what would it be?

Would it be Santa Claus? Or a wrapped present? A holly wreath? Christmas lights?Or, perhaps a candy cane?The one thing most people would not name is a nativity set.I like walking through neighborhoods looking at Christmas decorations. When I do my morning walk, I notice the symbols people place on their lawns to represent Christmas.OK, I bet you can guess. Who's the most popular guy on lawns and in windows? Yes, it's Santa Claus.As I walked the streets in my town, I saw so many Santas I stopped counting. I also saw a lot of inflatable figures representing Disney characters. Snoopy was also well-represented.Walking through two different neighborhoods, I saw exactly one nativity set displayed outside.My own symbol of Christmas is a star of Bethlehem I bought years ago, appropriately in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the Christmas City.I started thinking about symbols we use to represent Christmas after a visit to my friend, Maggie. People are flocking to her home to see the antique Holy Land tableaus she erected in what is normally her living room.Now, the entire room is a 30-foot old-time depiction of the first Christmas. The display also runs up the wall where multitalented Maggie built tiers of rocks and stones to look like the Holy land. Commanding the center of attention is a nativity set that depicts what happened on that first Christmas.There are also temples with high priests, tradesmen at work, women carrying water, merchants selling their wares - everything one would see in a biblical era village.Santa Claus is nowhere to be seen.Actually, I love Maggie's story about her childhood in Puerto Rico where every home had a nativity in a place of honor. But there was no Santa Claus."We didn't have all those stories about Santa Claus coming down the chimney with gifts for good boys and girls," she said."Christmas was a religious celebration when I grew up in Puerto Rico. Santa Claus is primarily an American tradition that didn't become part of our culture or our Christmas traditions," she explained.There were small gifts given on Jan. 6 to represent the wise men bearing gifts, she said. "Everything about Christmas had a religious meaning and every child celebrated the Christmas story," she added.It was considered an honor to be the one who placed the nativity set in the home. "From the time I was a very small child, I was the one who did that in our home," Maggie related.When she and her parents went to visit friends and relatives, Maggie was drawn to their nativity set, often arranging and rearranging the figures until she thought they were "just right."There's a telling story about Maggie as a 5-year-old. When neighbors were moving from their Puerto Rico neighborhood, they brought their nativity set to Maggie, saying no one loved it more than she did.When Maggie was 10 she and her family moved to Florida where she eventually went to college to study art. No surprise, considering she always had an artistic flair, even as a young child.Although she picked up some American customs throughout the years, Santa Claus wasn't one of them. The nativity representing the birth of Christ always remained the focus of her Christmas celebrations."When my husband and I were married we didn't have much money so we waited until the after-Christmas sale to buy our first Fontanini nativity. We only bought Jesus, Mary and Joseph that year but every year we added to them," she says.She didn't buy cheap plastic figures made in China. Because Maggie reveres the nativity as "the reason for the season" she slowly bought finely crafted figurines made in Italy. She also used her artistic talent to make many parts of the Christmas village in her home.Maggie's seven boys and eight grandchildren were raised to understand Christmas is not about Santa Claus. It's about the birth of Jesus.Maggie's nativity display is extraordinary and her story about a "no Santa" celebration is also extraordinary.What a contrast between that and what we see going on all around us.In city after city nativity sets are being removed from public places because it offends some people. It violates their rights? What about the rights of believers, who, by the way, still happen to be the majority.Because of that same fear of offending some, schools and organizations that have Christmas programs are forced to take out any song that refers to the birth of Christ or that can be construed as "religious."We have even dropped the name "Christmas" from our December observance. We now call it "the holidays.""Happy holidays," we hear time and again.As I write this, today's paper carries a story about schools having to drop the name "Christmas vacation." It's part of the push to eliminate the word Christmas from public use.Isn't it pathetic how easily we Christians surrendered our Christ-centered traditions so we don't offend others?Yet, at the same time, other cultures and other religions fight hard to have their own belief system honored.Fortunately, there will always be people like Maggie who honor the real meaning of Christmas.