Did you hear about the Long Island mall that got rid of its Christmas tree in an attempt at political correctness?

It happened. The Roosevelt Field Mall, allegedly reacting to previous years' criticism, omitted their typical giant Christmas tree from their decorations.

Paradoxically, this move wound up offending more people than saving their feelings. Which, I've got to say, I'm not surprised to hear. 

Roosevelt Field Mall, now fielding a storm of complaints and boycotts, finally gave in and said they'd get a Christmas tree. Which, if you ask me, they should've done in the first place. 

If this mall (and other Simon-operated malls) wants to appease a diverse customer base, they should do so by acknowledging a diversity of cultures. 

Would it have been so hard for the Roosevelt Field Mall to add a menorah for Hanukkah and a kinara for Kwanza? They could've avoided alienating their Muslim customers by sprucing up their decor for Eid, the end of Ramadan, in July.

They could have offended a lot fewer people by something so simple it's nearly laughable. They could have offended so many fewer people by just including them.

That's the way to avoid offending people: including them. Not by stripping down Christmas decorations to bare bones in a blatant and peculiar attempt at inclusion by exclusion.

I'm Jewish, but I completely adore Christmastime in New York City. I love the yellow lights that sparkle all the way down Park Avenue. I love the carols and the bulbs that gleam on the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center.

I revere this time of year. I love walking through the snow with Christmas music blasting in my ears. I love when my roommates and I sling Christmas lights all throughout our apartment, and our apartment is illuminated in a colorful glow.

I love the movies about Christmas cheer and the colorful lights adorning Bloomingdale's. I love the spiritual invocation, the earnest songs that praise Jesus, and yes, I'll admit it. I even love SantaCon, the day of bleary, drunken revelry. 

I love SantaCon because it's glazed over with Christmas nostalgia, with wintertime bliss and reckless abandon. 

I love SantaCon because my first year in the city I had no friends, and it was a day I got included. A friend from grad school invited me to her apartment and I spent the whole day with her and her friends, drinking whiskey and coffee, stumbling from bar to bar, laughing a lot.

Did my parents bring my sister and I to take photographs on Santa's lap at the mall when we were toddlers? 

No, they didn't, but that didn't prevent me from being enchanted by the giant Christmas tree at the King of Prussia Mall, the shimmering lights, and the stacks and stacks of presents below the tree.

I grew up in a Pennsylvania suburb that was all but rural. Besides my sister and me, there were probably two other Jewish kids in my elementary school. 

I'm actually delighted to meet so many other Jews in NYC, because meeting other people from my culture was rare growing up. My sister and I were always different.

Christmas wasn't offensive, though. Here's what was offensive. 

When my sister was in second grade, her teacher passed out a pictures for the class to color. Every student in the class got a black-and-white outline of Santa Claus to color. Except my sister. My sister got a snowman. Every other student in the class got a candy cane. Except my sister.

You'd think my sister's teacher would've taken the time to get my sister a replacement candy, but she didn't. She just skipped over her when she was passing out the candy canes.

I still remember this now because of how infuriating it was. My mom solved the problem by calling my sister's teacher and asking her to include my sister in the Christmas celebrations, to just pretend she wasn't any different.

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When I was in seventh grade, we were assigned a song to sing in chorus that proclaimed "Jesus, our savior." I remember my face burning in embarrassment when we had to sing that line, because Jesus wasn't my savior. 

My Judaism is and always has been sacred to me, and singing this line felt like a blasphemous form of assimilation. 

It felt like (and it was) a humiliating form of subjugation.

Eventually, my dad called the school. The principal sternly instructed that chorus teacher not to assign such a religious song again.

I think that teacher enacted her revenge on me by screaming at me for hugging my seventh grade boyfriend in the hallway, but maybe I was projecting. 

Maybe she would have yelled at any naive, pubescent couple for the crime of hugging in the hallway.

The point is: these are the times we were humiliated. When we were left out, ostracized, one apart from the whole. These were the times we were offended.

Still, I love Christmas. 

When my sister, cousin and I were very young, we'd stay up very late with a video camera trained on our next door neighbor's chimney on Christmas Eve, breathlessly awaiting Santa's arrival to our neighborhood, by then coated in a blanket of snow.

We hardly dared to breathe because we were so excited. We did this with the video camera because we knew Santa wouldn't be coming down our chimney.

When I tell that story, I'm usually met with pity. But this isn't a sad memory. I remember only exhilaration, enchantment, and eventually exhaustion. I doubt we ever stayed up past 10 p.m. Needless to say, we never sighted Santa Claus.

Here's the thing about Christmas: as capitalistic, as commercial and ostracizing a holiday as it is, it's completely based in love and caring. It's a chance to hand people the love in our hearts in the form of gifts.

In NYC, it's a time you get to twirl on an ice rink in Central Park and make out under mistletoe. It's an excuse to spike your hot chocolate and head to Columbus Circle's holiday market buy presents for your friends. 

It's even a time to get cliché and go marvel at the Rockettes at the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. 

So everyone who's trying to sterilize the holiday season by stripping down Christmas cheer, trust me. That's the wrong way to go about it. I'm delighted by the menorah in Bryant Park. I love the acknowledgement of Hanukah. 

More than anything though, I love how the city comes together in a carnival of light, songs, and gifts during Christmastime. We need this happy cheer to propel us through the cold months. We need Christmas lights to illuminate the darkness that falls over the city in December.

I love waking up in the stillness of Christmas with my family, when the four of us can just be together without any requirement of being anywhere else. We're Jewish, but we still get this supreme togetherness on Christmas.

Don't try to avoid offending people by ruining Christmas. Just include them. Let them make Christmas theirs, too.

Check out 7 NYC Holiday Markets You Simply Must Visit in November.