Actually, I have seen people from the United States commenting how actually they are quite disengaged with politics, expect when there is an important election ahead and they need to figure who they are going to choose to vote for. There seems to be an important percentage of the population of that country who does not actually follow politics, they only start to care when it is "election season" and they get all the political news shoved down their throats by the media machinery of both the political left and the political right.
Keeping this points aside, I find that comparison between Christmas and Politics to be quite out of place, the first one is a holiday, supposed to be festive and bring peace and calmest to those who celebrate it, election season is about ideas colliding figuring out the best way to steer the country with no collateral damage, there is nothing holy or festive about it, at all. They both sound almost as incompatible from one another .