The future of Christmas, or, is a commercialized holiday the real thing?

Drudge today featured a story about a man protested the commercialization of Christmas by displaying an image of Santa on a cross:

"Santa has been perverted from who he started out to be," Conrad said. "Now he's the person being used by corporations to get us to buy more stuff."

Which struck me as an ironic thing to say, since, as even Snopes concedes, an old Coca-Cola ad campaign "had a great deal to do with establishing Santa Claus as a ubiquitous Christmas figure in America." This article from the Toronto Star has more, with some particularly interesting observations on how our commercial Christmas emerged out of the Industrial Revolution, mass education and the modern domestic ideal.

Which gives rise to the question: What next?