Christmas Is Kicking Ass in the War on Christmas

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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/christmas-is-kicking-ass-in-the-war-on-christmas/282515/




SANTA MONICA, Calif. – As dusk fell on Palisades Park, a greenbelt atop an oceanfront bluff in this prosperous seaside city, no uniformed combatants were present. But this 26.4-acre idyll is as close as anyplace in America to the front lines in the War on Christmas.

The long-simmering conflict, which some trace as far back as the 1920s, has gained new prominence in recent years, thanks in part to efforts by a militant pro-Christmas broadcaster, the Fox News Channel, to document anti-Christmas aggression. Its star personality, Bill O'Reilly, may be remembered for his coverage of the conflict much as Bernard Shaw's journalistic legacy is inseparable from his dispatches from the Persian Gulf War. And this year, Fox's sophisticated web operation is soliciting field reports from allied civilians.

Decades ago, Christmas fighters would have counted Santa Monica as a key West Coast stronghold. Its erstwhile nickname, "The City of the Christmas Story," was conferred because starting in 1953, Christian residents decided to erect and display life-sized nativity scenes. They sought and were denied funding from nearby churches (which didn't want to cooperate with one another), only to find a willing patron in the local chamber of commerce, which thought the display would attract holiday shoppers. The tradition persisted for decades without controversy.