From the New York Times:

How the ‘War on Christmas’ Controversy Was Created

By LIAM STACK DEC. 19, 2016

It’s that time of year again, folks. It’s time for the War on Christmas.

What is that, you may ask? The short answer: a sometimes histrionic yuletide debate over whether the United States is a country that respects Christianity.

For the longer answer, keep reading.

The idea of a “War on Christmas” has turned things like holiday greetings and decorations into potentially divisive political statements. People who believe Christmas is under attack point to inclusive phrases like “Happy Holidays” as (liberal) insults to Christianity.

For over a decade, these debates have taken place mainly on conservative talk radio and cable programs. But this year they also burst onto a much grander stage: the presidential election.

At a rally in Wisconsin last week, Donald J. Trump stood in front of a line of Christmas trees and repeated a campaign-trail staple.

“When I started 18 months ago, I told my first crowd in Wisconsin that we are going to come back here some day and we are going to say ‘Merry Christmas’ again,” he said. “Merry Christmas. So, Merry Christmas everyone. Happy New Year, but Merry Christmas.”

Christmas is a federal holiday celebrated widely by the country’s Christian majority. So where did the idea that it is threatened come from? …

Fast forward 400 years, and the idea of a plot against Christmas gained wide publicity when Fox News promoted a 2005 book by a radio host, John Gibson, that alleged liberal antagonism toward the holiday, according to Dan Cassino, a professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Intelligent people were noticing a pattern long before. For example, here’s Tom Piatak’s War on Christmas 2001 article in VDARE.

The NYT asserts:

There is no evidence of an organized attack on Christmas in the United States.

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the annual uproar is based on “stories that only sometimes even contain a grain of truth and often are completely false.” He has spent years pushing back against it.

“This politicizing of the whole issue is mind-boggling to me,” Mr. Lynn said, “and it has been for well over a decade.”

He added, “They see this as some kind of a politically correct effort, but I see it as reasonable to not use Christmas references as just an accommodation of the reality of America.” …

But the AUSCS shouldn’t be blamed for trying to politicize Christmas negatively, because the the AUSCS is on the good side, not the bad side, unlike all those evil pro-Christmas bigots.

The greeting “Happy Holidays” has been in use as a Christmas greeting for more than 100 years. But it has grown in popularity in recent decades as people have tried to be inclusive and sensitive to those of other faiths and the nonreligious.

The controversy appears to have shifted opinion about the proper greeting. Mr. Cassino wrote in the Harvard Business Review this month that the number of people who said they preferred to to hear “Happy Holidays” has decreased sharply in the last 10 years, from 41 percent to 25 percent.

In other words, Peter Brimelow was exactly right to start pushing on The War on Christmas back in 2000. Being Pro-Christmas is a winning proposition. Here’s my 2005 VDARE article on all the classic Christmas songs with Jewish composers.

 

Everybody likes Christmas!

Well, not quite everybody …

In other news from the Nonexistent War on Christmas, from Der Taggensspiegel in Berlin:

[Comment at Unz.com]