The war on Christmas that is.\u00a0 Yes, it\u2019s that time of year again, when Conservative groups insist there is a War on Christmas<\/em>.\u00a0 I\u2019m of two minds about this whole thing.\u00a0 On one hand it seems like one big pain in the butt.\u00a0 Fact is, Christmas has always been part religious, part reason to party.\u00a0 This goes back a thousand years, possibly two.\u00a0 There has long been a tendency to embrace\u00a0our inner hedonism at this time of year while Church leaders desperately try to emphasize the religious aspects.\u00a0 That age long battle has ebbed and flowed through the centuries.\u00a0 In America, the biggest threat has apparently come from the rise of our retail industry.\u00a0 As consumerism and commercialism elbowed their way into the season, a growing intolerance for a faith based on the humble beginnings of a baby born in a manger started to show.\u00a0 By the early to mid 20th century, let\u2019s face it, most new Christmas songs were long on chestnuts, Jack Frost, and nose nipping, and short on angels, Mary, or Jesus.\u00a0 <\/p>\n By the 70s, when I was old enough to pay attention, I could watch as television stations began to subtly change the exclusive Merry Christmas greeting with the more inclusive Happy Holidays.\u00a0 Various groups, reminding us of wrongs done in the name of religion (read: Christianity), and aided by secularists who still dream of the eradication of religion from the world, gradually pushed the religious aspects of the holiday out the door.\u00a0 In addition, the SCOTUS added to the fray by giving public educators the feeling that the less said about the holiday formerly known as Christmas, the better. <\/p>\n By the 1990s, Christmas had been replaced by Holidays, that baby was occasionally talked about but never mentioned by name, Holiday Pageants were all the rage in schools, and most stores were happy to hang \u2018Seasons Greetings\u2019 across their doors.\u00a0 So what happened? Why all of a sudden is there this \u2018war\u2019?<\/p>\n FOX News maybe?\u00a0 Perhaps, though FOX\u00a0was around when the secularization was already well under way.\u00a0 If I were a betting man, and I\u2019m not, I\u2019d bet that it was probably the decision a couple years back of a few stores and retailers to forbid their employees from saying the \u2018C\u2019 word.\u00a0 Americans are funny, and typically rebel against overt censorship.\u00a0 A store deciding to hang up a non-committal holiday banner to increase the almighty profit is one thing.\u00a0 A store telling devout Christians that they are forbidden to speak the name of their own holy day publicly, even though the store has every intention on exploiting said holiday for its own god Mammon, was too much.\u00a0 In stepped FOX News and other conservative outlets, and voila!\u00a0 You have a seasonal guarantee as reliable as the media\u2019s annual \u2018Jesus was just a myth\u2019 stories. <\/p>\n In addition, some believers in modern atheism, which to me is more of a personality disorder than an intellectual movement, have decided to jump in and basically act like the proverbial prepubescent spoiled brat.\u00a0 With giant signs more or less giving a big middle finger to Christmas (don\u2019t expect similar signs aimed at Muslim or Jewish holidays, for cowardliness is another trait in many modern atheist circles), they are adding to the flames and doing their best to be the living carpet tacks on the easy chair of life that modern atheism has become.\u00a0 <\/p>\n