Recorded history is far from a verbatim account of events, but gathering, vetting and piecing together evidence is the best we can do. Much of the Old Testament and most of the New Testament are diametrically opposed to such accounts, but the purpose of compiling the most credible and verifiable accounts of history is to sleuth out the facts pertaining to the past. There's no agenda besides that. From the vantage point of secular academia, religion has a pointed anti-science bias.
When faced with two incompatible data sets, I round is favor of science, because the laws which govern it predate religion by about 13 billion years.
As for other Abrahamic faiths, I'm guessing it has a lot to do with how many fewer denominations of those there are, and how less often they set about murdering non-believers. In any case, everything I know about Islam I had to go out of my way to learn. Not so much with Christianity.
I'm fine with Christmas. It just irks me when people conflate a story they invented with what the best available data converges on as the most accurate portrayal of how events actually transpired.
