emacs20 requires xlibs and xfree86-common?

[Kurt Lieber <debian@kirpatrick.com>]

I've always been a vim user, so I've never installed emacs on my machines.  
However, I have a need for it now and when I went to install it, discovered 
that it has all kinds of x-related dependencies (xfree86-common, xlibs, 
libxaw7)

Does anyone know what the correlation is between text-based emacs and x? 
(this is the emacs20 package from woody -- NOT xemacs21)   Is this something 
I can safely override (probably not) or work around and still use the debian 
package system?

Suggestions welcome.

--kurt