Ah yes. 'Tis the season to be hateful and divisive, and our social conservative friends are gearing up for another season of slathering and frothing over efforts by public institutions to be inclusive of those who celebrate anything other than Christmas.
It's weeks before Thanksgiving but already interest groups are preparing for an intense year of conflict over Christmas observances by cities and public schools, with one conservative group lining up hundreds of attorneys to work on the issue.
The AP article basically lays out the far right strategy (I almost mistyped "tragedy") -- to turn the holiday season into yet another cultural battleground in the war against cultural diversity.
Hundreds of lawyers will be on tap to fight this battle, guaranteed to be even nastier and more polarizing than the battles over evolution (after all, who can argue with the
Vatican's big "game over for ID") and illegal immigration:
This week, the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group based in Scottsdale, Ariz., announced that its 800 cooperating attorneys have volunteered to handle without fee complaints about "improper attempts to censor the celebration of Christmas in schools and on public property."
Liberals will be accused of trying to "ban Christmas":
The topic also is the subject of a polemic by the Fox News Channel's John Gibson that is selling briskly: "The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought."
Never mind that this so-called sacred holiday is treated as a completely secular orgy of consumption in this country, but I digress.
But even the ACLU says secular holiday celebrations are A-OK:
ACLU religion director Jeremy Gunn was in meetings and unavailable, a spokeswoman said. But an official ACLU bulletin says the Constitution forbids school observances "that promote or emphasize the religious significance" of Christmas, but not aspects "that have become part of our country's secular culture." The ACLU has repeatedly fought displays with religious themes on public property.
So what's the big freakin' deal?
Another brick in the wall of noise that keeps us from doing something about the Problem of Evil in the White House. That's what the big deal is.
Get ready to fight the Christmas Wars.