I do appreciate you taking the article seriously instead of outright rejecting it. We don't have a fear-based approach in the Orthodox church about these things, so while I get what you're saying about the 1%, just...no.
Maybe we're wrong. Maybe God is angry with us and jealous of something we do with our families that literally doesn't take away from Him at all. I'll take my chances on that because that's not the God I believe in. And my wife and I come from a reasonably long line of non-Christmas celebrators, and are very modest in our own celebrations. Our own idol, er, tree is only 12" tall LOL
The central part of my faith around this season is celebrating the Nativity of our Lord, which yes, we celebrating on December 25 (on whichever church calendar the jurisdiction uses - another discussion) and has no mention of Christmas trees in the service.
I do believe you and the other main contributors in this thread choose not to celebrate due to a genuine desire to please God and not out of fear and I can respect that. I hope you're not like the ones I saw growing up that preach against Easter on Easter b/c to me that's just weird. But kudos for working it out for yourself.
I doubt you're going to convince any Orthodox Christian (not that we're your only audience) based on much of the information you presented because 1 - we respect the Tradition of the Church, which has been worked out/hashed out over many centuries and 2 - we do not give much credence to isolated examples or unlabeled marginal remarks, but rather the consensus of the whole Church as we work things out together (not accepting it blindly as it might seem). This is a radical difference in our viewpoints but very important.
Again, thanks for at least considering the article/rant on its merits even if we don't agree
