War on Christmas?

Atheists are sometimes accused of waging a "war on Christmas".  My question is why any knowledgeable atheist would bother.  Nothing about Christmas has anything to do with Jesus or Christianity.

The concept of December 25 as the birthday of a god originates with the cult of Mithra (depicted above), the ancient Persian god of light and wisdom.  Mithra's cult dates back to at least 1450 BC, but became much more widespread after it was absorbed by Zoroastrianism and carried all over the Middle East by the expansion of the Persian Empire under Cyrus the Great in the 6th century BC.  Later Mithraism became popular in the Roman Empire, with the name being Latinized as "Mithras"; the god was also known as Sol Invictus, the "Unconquered Sun".  For the first few centuries of Christianity, several different dates around the year were celebrated as Jesus's birthday (the Gospels do not assign a date, though they make it fairly obvious that the birth did not happen in the winter).  Eventually Mithra's established birthday was assigned to Jesus in order to Christianize the date and celebrations which were already popular throughout the Roman domain.  Some parts of the ancient Persian story of Mithra's birth, such as the three wise men, were also assimilated into Christian mythology.

The gift-giving and revelry we associate with Christmas comes from the pagan Roman festival of Saturnalia, which was celebrated from December 17 through 23.  After the triumph of Christianity, these practices became associated with Christmas simply because of the proximity of the two events on the calendar.  Another feature of Saturnalia was social role reversal in which, for example, slaves were seated in places of honor at meals, while their masters waited on them.  It's too bad this practice didn't also survive as part of Christmas; it's interesting to imagine what it might look like in our present-day society.

Other trappings of modern Christmas, such as Santa Claus, the Yule log, and Christmas trees, were derived much later from Germanic paganism.  Santa Claus may even be partly based on the Germanic god Odin.

So we're talking about an ancient Persian holiday with celebrations based on an ancient pagan Roman festival with some pagan Germanic imagery added on.  There's no connection with Christianity except an arbitrary glomming on to the date as Jesus's birthday in late Roman times, which has no basis in the Gospels or in anything else.  Christmas means nothing to me, but I see no reason why anyone would wage a "war" on it, because there is nothing Christian about it.