There has been a lot of hoopla raised by the usual goof-ball rabble rousers (mostly that coward Bill O'Reilly over at Faux-News and the so-called American Family Association) about some supposed war on Christmas. At first I thought this was some sort of joke, and that the goof-balls were just ranting out of sheer spite, but I see Neely Tucker has an excellent article about this in the Washington Post. Be sure to read it to the end, it is very interesting.

Basically I think Neely has this pegged on the nose:

1. many Americans are concerned about the over commercialization of Christmas
   
2. most Americans are not concerned about wether a store has "Happy Holidays" or "Merry Christmas" on their posters
   
3. most healthy Christians are not offended by the phrase "Happy Holidays"
   
4. most non-Christians are not offended by the phrase "Merry Christmas"
   
5. the few people who are concerned, are really more concerned that they no longer control the public holiday, the family, the social compact, and the center stage than they are about the true meaning of Christmas
   
6. the last week of December is probably not the anniversary of the birth of Jesus, that is more likely to be sometime in September, though we probably will never know
   
7. the last week of December is the proper time to celebrate many holidays, but especially Yule and Saturnalia, so let the parties begin!

The date many Americans celebrate as Christmas was first set in 395 by an early Christian Church that desperately wanted more converts. They figured that by setting a major Christian holiday amid the widely popular pagan celebration of Saturnalia, conversion would be easier for them to attract converts. It also coincided with the traditional Northern European celebration of Yule, which has to do more with the darkest days following winter solstice. Puritans did not celebrate Christmas because they were horrified by the free use of clearly pagan symbols (holly, drinking heavily, gift exchange).