Peter Brimelow likes to wait until 12th Night— the Feast of the Epiphany —before closing out the War against Christmas Competition. This allows for late entries to trickle in (please send!), and for some reflection.

But one thing is quite clear from watching this year's news flow: the other side is badly rattled. They showed it with their ludicrous parroting of the propaganda line ("lie" in plain English) that there has been no effort to suppress Christmas, an assertion propagated so rapidly, extensively and uniformly as to be comic ...if it hadn't been such a formidable demonstration of MSM power.

And particularly significantly, it showed in the attempts by various NeoConservatives to make peace, seen in Amity Shlaes' Bloomberg column two weeks ago, and in a new column by David Frum. ("The Lord of Misrule" Is Coming to Town" AEI.org December 26 2006)

Buried beneath the usual assortment of disparaging and belittling historical factoids about the Christmas tradition (they've really had to hit the books on this!) are some major concessions by Frum:

the most fiercely contested of all Christmas symbols are precisely those about which Christians have historically been most dubious: the trees, boughs and Father Christmas.

These ironic facts point the way to a historic compromise.

We should recognize: There is nothing inherently Christian about the visual ornaments of the Christmas season. Quite the contrary: They are explicitly non-Christian objects that have been imbued with Christian symbolism hundreds and thousands of years afterward. A Christian can look at the Christmas evergreen and see a symbol of the eternal life promised by Jesus to his followers. But a non-Christian remains free to look at that same tree and see . . . just a tree.

Well, maybe not "just" a tree. These are trees that emerge from the ancient culture of northern Europe and the British Isles—a culture inherited by every English-speaking person, regardless of his or her particular creed or ethnicity. It is from that culture that we have derived our free society, our separation of church and state, and our rights to protest and complain. (VDARE.com emphasis)

So maybe those trees deserve a little veneration from everyone, Christian or not. And maybe, for just a few weeks of the year, those rights to protest and complain should go unexercised.

These mirror the remarks by Shlaes

In the U.S., the Christmas tree has earned a right to be a symbol of general tolerance...At Sea-Tac, the removal of the Christmas tree created a spiritual tragedy...Though the Christmas tree might be removed in the name of tolerance, the space that results makes the country less tolerant than before.

For the Christophobic left, the task is very simple. They want to eradicate American traditions. (Hat tip, View from the Right, for a particularly fine example). The NeoConservatives, however, are engaged on a far more ambitious program. While picking up concessions about symbols if easily obtainable, their main interest is getting a war fought for them. For this, they are willing to express moving, generous (and not inaccurate) thoughts.

Very attractive, if you don't have a draft-age son.