Columns of smoke are still rising and occasional explosions can still be heard from the Seattle Christmas Tree battleground, marking what might well be the most important engagement in the War on Christmas to date. At this writing, Google News is still showing almost 600 stories on the topic; at various times this week the total has approached 1,000.

A measure of the importance of the event is that a discussion of it has appeared on Bloomberg News, which by virtue of its finance orientation comments only selectively on social issues.

Defending Christmas Tress, a Stand for Tolerance By Amity Shlaes Dec.14 (Bloomberg) is very unusual, elegantly praising the traditions of Christian America:

There's something about a Christmas tree at the center of a public place…that makes us feel merry, many non- Christians included. We welcome the trees, wreaths and songs as a comforting national celebration. This is true not merely because Christians founded this country. It is also because Protestant Christians, with some notable exceptions, have been good hosts over the years to those of who don't believe precisely the same things they do. In the U.S., the Christmas tree has earned a right to be a symbol of general tolerance.

I am Jewish, but most of my education came by way of Christian, or formerly Christian, institutions and people…. the experience of my generation at the hands of the successors of [the Yankee founders of New England] was entirely benign.

Concluding that

At Sea-Tac, the removal of the Christmas tree created a spiritual tragedy

Shlaes ends by essentially proposing a cease-fire.

When a member of the NeoConservative media establishment like Shlaes (her husband is Seth Lipsky, editor of the New York Sun) feels the need to be conciliatory on an issue like this, something has been achieved.

And what, one might ask, has been the discussion of this controversy over at National Review, where Peter Brimelow initiated the Christmas defense counter-attack some 12 years ago? Especially at The Corner, that well-populated hang-out of energetic news junkies?

Zero.

Perhaps the biggest single controversy in this debate attracted no comment whatever. The web site has just belatedly posted the Kathyn Jean Lopez column predating the Seattle story, calling for abandoning the struggle.

There were, however, several postings denouncing the recent Iranian Holocaust Revisionist Conference. NRO, it seems, is prepared to defend observance traditions which are important.

Ask Corner editor Lopez why the treatment of Christmas is no longer important at National Review.