Christmast Tree or Manger?

Because it doesn't seem to bug almost anyone else, I've put up with it for years, but this was the year that I finally paid attention to a whisper about the Christmas tree.

I know this will peg me as a fanatic, but I'm just not comfortable with presents under a tree. If the whole point is the birth of Jesus, why is there this enormous, fake (in our case), tree that we decorate. To drag religion into it, it's almost a contradiction to pile presents under a tree, when the original gift givers put them under a manger with a baby in it. (Well, that's actually very historically suspect, but it's less suspect than that they put them under some evergreen in the middle of Palestine). Really, it makes sense to my atheist friends, since there isn't a God, then Jesus certainly wasn't his son, and the holidays are the point, not a Christmas. But since we're not atheist it makes more sense for us to put a manger and baby at the center of the season.

So this year, we put out a manger, and left it empty until the 25th and we put presents under it. I know I'm risking coming off as hoity-toity here, so please hear this as a Lockie family experiment. The results I think were positive. Our kids liked it, I was comfortable with it, and it helped us remember that Christmas is when Jesus became a baby and God became a Dad. Anyway, I'm curious about what others think about this? Am I alone here, is it just me that thinks the Christmas tree is an odd tradition, or am I just a religious loony that takes symbols too seriously?