An editorial in the Duluth News Tribune recently questioned, “There’s Still a ‘War on Christmas’?” Atheist Jeff Sorensen flatly said on Huffington Post that “There is no war on Christmas.” Statesman Journal columnist Dick Hughes wrote a piece about the “phony and irrelevant War on Christmas.” MSNBC madman Lawrence O’Donnell said the War on Christmas has a “body count” of “zero.” Frank Bruni of the New York Times said there could hardly be a War on Christmas given that “We have God on our dollars, God in our pledge of allegiance, God in our Congress.” The Boston Globe editorialized that “Ignoring the ‘war on Christmas’ is the best way to eliminate it altogether.”
There is little doubt that the anti-Christmas side has been weakening. But the war is hardly over. The big battle won by the Thomas More Law Center in securing the right of a nativity scene to be erected on a public median in Warren, Michigan is evidence that we need to continue to fight for our rights. Thanks to us, senior citizens in Newhall, California got their Christmas tree back after management tried to ban it. Children who attend Terry Elementary School in Little Rock, Arkansas know about the War on Christmas: their planned trip to a local church to see “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was cancelled. An anti-Christmas billboard in Times Square that shows a depiction of Jesus crucified is testimony to the vile nature of the War on Christmas. There is no shortage of such examples.
O’Donnell is right to say that this war has a body count of zero. The same is true of the alleged War on Women—no one has died in the battle over who should have to pay for Sandra Fluke’s contraception. Bruni’s point is undermined by the ACLU: it has tried to delete God from our coins and the Pledge, and has sought to deny Congress its chaplains. Finally, if the best way to eliminate a culture war is to ignore it, then the Boston Globe should remain agnostic in the War on Christmas.
Atheists say they want a public display of their beliefs. The complaint is bogus: most parks already have huge areas where there is absolutely nothing.
