Well I never expected that there would be quite so many Bah Humbug its bleeding Christmas folk on here. What were you all like as a child, didn't
This is probably a very bad topic for this thread. But since you ask, why would I look forward to something I don't believe in? Sure as a child I did, but as a child we don't have the training to critically think about these things. That's all I should probably say ...
What's not to believe in in a midwinter feast, every culture has had one all the way down the ages. You don't
have to call it Christmas, call it Kwanzaa, call it Yule, call it Saturnalia, call it Dong Zhi, call it Shab-e Yalda, or Inti Raymi, or Shalako, or Soyal, or Toji, or just plain Midwinter. It doesn't
have to be associated with any particular religion's sky fairy. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you get frostbite in your toes.
A bunch of people I know used to get together for Saturnalia on the 21st December, either in a central London pub upper room or occasionally at Conway Hall in Red Lion Square if it looked like a particularly big one. We'd eat, drink and there was a tradition of people preparing a 'turn' for the event - a comic sketch, telling a favourite shaggy dog story (Conroy's "Flea's Holiday" was an annual fixture*) and the memorable occasion when Gareth and others did "The Full Monty". AH, happy days...
Edited to add:
* This one was so well known that one year, when Conroy was there but had advanced sufficiently in years (he'd have been 85ish at the time) that he didn't feel up to standing up and telling it, that the popular demand for the telling was such that myself and Ian took the floor and told the tale between us, taking alternative lines of the story.