From an abandoned opening for a Time.com piece:
It is, as we’re told so many times during the month of December, the most wonderful time of the year. And yet, there are many who don’t enjoy this holiday season, with all the colorful ephemera that it brings — people who are left cold by stories of Santas and sleighs, or songs with choirs, bells and/or unrestrained sentimentality.
In times past, those people have fallen victim to parody and insult, being satirized as unenlightened Scrooges or miserable Grinches in exactly the kinds of stories that they’d find little use for, if not outright disdain. It’s been a strange response; a childish one, in some ways, akin to thumbing the nose and responding “Well, it wasn’t meant for you anyway” with a pout.
You can understand the impulse behind such a reply — it’s hard not to be defensive when someone criticizes something that appeals to the child in you, after all — but nonetheless, there’s something uncharacteristically cruel about it. If the holiday season is supposed to be one of inclusiveness and kindness, then making fun of those who don’t agree with you behind their backs is surely the kind of thing that should earn you a lump of coal from the jolly fat man with the white beard and fur-trimmed hat.