In 'Portnoy's Complaint', little Alexander comes home from school talking about Christmas stuff they did in class.
His mother informs him that 'we don't have Christmas.'
Not long afterward, Alexander's class is cutting out snowflakes.
When he gets home he asks his mother 'Do we have snow?'
Poor Sophie Portnoy!

My answer: No. Snow is non-denominational.
Probably its earliest appearance in literature is in the Psalms of David; but that doesn't make it Jewish. Does it?

My public high school was about one-third Jewish. It was a great surprise for me when I discovered that the overall percentage of Jews in America is around 3% or one-tenth that many. I've never heard anyone say that as New Jersey goes, so goes the nation.

As someone who grew up in New York and moved to Israel in 1977, I see it in several perspectives. Growing up, I had the image of winter and snow and Christmas and Channukah all mixed up together as it was all around me, that was the reality. I grew up in a mixed neighborhood and had all kinds of friends, so it was all familiar. I did , however, feel somewhat out of place ( and sometimes even sinful ) when visiting houses with Christmas trees and such. The scent of the trees, the candles, the incense, the cooking, it all spelled out *goy* to my brain and I knew that that was NOT my scent. My scent was simmering chicken soup, baking cheesecake, juicy lambchops. After having moved to Israel to the part where it doesn't snow, today snow and snowflakes spell American winter to my brain, which immediately connects to Christmas, which isn't my holiday. I know it's all weird and makes no sense but that's how it works for me. On the other hand, the smell of frying latkes, mothballs, shopping bags, and horseradish that makes your eyes tear.... well thats home!!!!
Shalom to all of you
Jennie in Israel

Besides, as a people, we don't have a bad history with all the gentiles.

As I was saying to a friend on Chinese Food and Movie Day when he was remarking that maybe we eat Chinese food because it was a way for us to feel less like the other-- perhaps we eat Chinese food because here was a nation of gentiles with whom we don't have any bad history.

Responding to LiaBear's original post, maybe I can guess?

1. What is a religion? Is it just a body of doctrine or is it a living body of culture, some of which will include an accretion of that which, while not overtly spiritual or sacred, becomes part of that familiarity which defines that which is home? One need not follow the Mosaic law to bake or consume a chewy toroidal eggwashed bread (note the consumption of Simit among the mostly Islamic Turks), but the absence of bagels on the table at the back of the Shul on Shabbes would be at least a little unsettling, even for those of us with Celiac who will refrain from consuming them. They're expected, a part of tradition.

Those little stylized snowflakes, while obviously having no basis in any Christian scripture, are a part of the quasi-secular body of custom that has grown up around the theoretical Christian holy day that is Christmas. (That which is secular seems to have almost completely overwhelmed that which is religious in that case of that observance). The association is there, and in the back of our minds we will be nagged by it, even if we've consciously forgotten why.

2. Observe the interior of a traditional synagogue, and note the paucity of representational art, the decoration tending more toward the geometric, perhaps as a sign of respect for the words "thou shalt not make a graven image". Chanukah is a religious holiday, for a religion whose worship is as centered in the home as anywhere else, and so if we bring representational art, however crude and unconvincing, into our celebration of any Jewish festival at home while shunning it in our shuls, we are building a contradiction into our practices, a particularly troublesome one in the case of the festival of ours that comes closest to Christmas.

Hoping that none will be insulted as I mention that which I'm sure all will recall, Chanukah celebrates the victory of the Maccabees as they put an end to the forced Hellanization of Israel, removing all that was Pagan from the Temple. How sadly ironic, some of us would say, if that very festival, so symbolic of the struggle of Israel to remain true to its own traditions, should become the one most often secularized, homogenized and saturated with the practices associated with another religion. I imagine that those who bled so much to achieve the victory we commemorate probably would not have been pleased, especially when they found out that the "Chanukah Bush / Christmas Tree" is, itself, probably a borrowed Pagan symbol that would have made little sense in Eretz Y'israel, a place that even in late January is scarcely a winter wonderland, and that paper snowflakes are often seen in close proximity to the unfortunate evergreens.

Others will probably differ, but I'm guessing that is some of what was going through the back of your mind.