… Merry Christmas, you wonderful old Building and Loan!

I’ve sort of been avoiding this hot topic on the grounds that it’s a little embarrassing. Because if it wasn’t for Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and John Gibson, it might never have become known that I was waging a war on Christmas.

See, I’m one of those “secular progressives” who was waging this assault as part of an agenda that includes “legalization of narcotics, euthanasia, abortion at will, gay marriage.” And I almost got away with it, too.

It’s not that I don’t wish people a “Merry Christmas.” That would be too obvious. It’s just that I’m also likely to say “Happy Holidays” instead sometimes. So there are good, Christian people, friends of mine, people I know, who on any given year might not actually get a “Merry Christmas” from me.

How does that advance my agenda for making sure that stoned gay people can get married after having abortions and then euthanize each other? Glad you asked. It’s working. Or at least it was working.

Let me give you an example. Two years ago, on Christmas, I ran into a friend of mine. I’ll call him “Jeffy,” because that’s his name.

“Hey,” Jeffy said as we parted company, “Merry Christmas!”

“Happy Holidays, man,” I replied, and headed off to a popular secular retailer to buy Darwin ornaments and monkey skulls for my “War on Christmas Tree.”

Jeffy, for his part, wandered off a little confused. I had removed Christ, even removed God, from the equation. Without that extra little nudge of faith (see Kierkegaard’s The Nudge of Faith, 1848) well, without that nudge, Jeffy’s moral compass came a bit unstuck. God had been removed from his life, and without God my pal was living in a random and chaotic universe of relativistic values and lowrider jeans.

Shortly after that, Jeffy realized he was gay - there was no longer any moral impetus not to be, and without that, well, he was gay as a goose, just like anyone who’s lost God. By week’s end he’d left his wife and moved into a cute brownstone with a stylist named Trent. For similar reasons, he began to take drugs, lots of drugs, including pot, crack, coke, smack, spank, crank, crunk, crink, crystal crink, plunk, and spelunk. All before New Year’s.

It wasn’t too long afterwards that Jeffy put his Aunt Hildy out of her misery. Though she wasn’t technically “terminally ill,” she did have a persistent back problem and rheumatoid arthritis, so Jeffy did the right thing using a strong rum toddy and one of Aunt Hildy’s own tasseled throw pillows while her husband and kids were at the store.

Jeffy also performed an abortion that summer, in the stands during a Cardinals game. I still don’t know how he managed that one. Late last year, on Christmas Eve, he and Trent were married in a small civil ceremony in Massachusetts. You can’t imagine how proud I was when he raised his glass, thanked us for coming, kissed his new husband, and then proclaimed to all…

“Happy Holidays!”

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Those proud days are over, thanks to men like Bill O’Reilly and John Gibson. [O’Reilly, you’ll note from the linked article, even has the courage to demand a “Merry Christmas” from a store named “FAO Schwartz.”] We anti-Christmas warriors have been caught red-handed, and we’re going to have to slink back to our lairs and come up with another way to break this country’s moral backbone. Don’t worry, we’ll think of something.

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But what I really wanted to do this holiday season was to wish all of you, the readers of Fanatical Apathy, the merriest and happiest of holidays. I hope you get all the gifts you want and give away more than you can afford. I wish you all the best. May your cups runneth over, and may your designated drivers help you clean up afterwards.

Remember late tonight, when you’re tucked into bed and are pretty sure that you can hear the sleigh-plane of Secula Clause and his eight Evolutionarily Unlikely But Free Range And Well-Treated Reindeer-Americans off in the distance, remember what this season is really all about: Loving each other (as long as you’re of the same gender), and hating America.

Merry Christmas!