The root cause of the war on Christmas, which is conducted almost exclusively by well-educated white people in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Australia—the very same people who like gay marriage—has almost nothing to do with fidelity to law (the First Amendment in the U.S.): it has to do with ideology.

The ideology is plainly an expression of left-wing secularism, and it is nothing if not anti-Western and anti-Christian. At its worst, it is driven by hatred; at its best, it is driven by a defensive posture, a deep sense of embarrassment over the legacy of Western civilization. There is no historical or moral justification for either. Moreover, those who are pushing this agenda generally lie about their work.

When Patricia Short, the principal of Will Rogers Elementary in Ventura County, California, said of the school’s holiday choir that “We can’t have anything with a religious reference,” she was flatly wrong: not only is there no law barring religious songs being sung in the public schools, the courts have affirmed just the opposite (see the 1980 U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision, Florey v. Sioux Falls School District). To show how duplicitous these cultural fascists are, consider that when a Jewish woman from North Carolina failed to get an elementary school to ban “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer,” she pushed to get a Hanukkah song sung. So it’s not religious songs that bother her, just Christian ones.

Want proof that hate is driving this assault? The head of the ACLU in New Hampshire, Claire Ebel, advises that if crèches are allowed in parks, it is permissible “for a display of satanic ritual.”

This hatred of Christmas is not exclusive to the U.S. In England, Muslim preacher Anjem Choudary called Christmas “evil” in a recent sermon. No wonder they are banning words like “bishop,” “chapel,” “monk” and “nun” from the Oxford Junior Dictionary. And all of this is being endorsed, if not promoted, by self-hating Christians, as well.