No Christmas is complete without a war on Christmas , and this year it 's being fought on several fronts . NPR reported the White House attacking Republican intransigence over the debt talks in a report with a section titled `` The Holiday Season is No Time to Threaten Middle-Class Pocketbooks . '' That prompted the Daily Caller to respond with the headline , `` Disagreeing with Obama can ruin Christmas , says White House report . '' In the eyes of some liberals , the Republicans have become the party of the Grinch . This must be news to conservatives who have always insisted that it 's the Democrats who want to steal Christmas . To them , the war is being waged by liberal secularists against patriotic American Christians who want to celebrate the holiday loudly and publicly in the way Baby Jesus intended . Pat Robertson has hit out at those `` miserable '' atheists and Fox News has gone after Rhode Island Gov . Lincoln Chafee for deciding not to host a Christmas tree lighting ceremony . In other words , although the war on Christmas phenomenon might have something to do with rising unbelief among Americans , more likely it reflects growing partisanship among politicians . In an age when nothing is so sacred it ca n't be used to hurt a political opponent , Christmas is one more weapon that statesmen and stateswomen can use against each other . But the meaning of the war on Christmas is actually bigger than partisan tomfoolery and is n't limited to right-wing fantasy , either . Some of it exposes genuine tensions within American politics and society . Take the decision of the Santa Monica City Council to end the tradition of erecting nativity scenes or other displays in Palisades Park . The right to display a scene was hitherto decided by lottery , and the previous winter season atheists won 11 out of 14 spaces , which they used to erect enormous critiques of Christianity . In response , locals lobbied the council to establish stricter guidelines about who could take part . The council decided that would be discriminatory , but it also did n't want to leave the system open to abuse by more offensive groups like neo-Nazis . So it decided the displays would have to stop altogether . That decision was upheld in November by a federal judge . The local secularists were thrilled . `` The free thinkers ... played the game of the religionists and they outsmarted them , '' Annie Laurie Gaylor told the Huffington Post . `` They showed the Christian people of the city what it feels like to have a public park promoting views that offend your personal conscience . These views were on public property that were supposed to be owned equally by everyone . '' This story is a classic example of the failure to reconcile different interests within a democratic society . Nobody involved was technically wrong . The secularist campaigners were right to say that the nativity displays should be open to everyone because they were on public land . Their Christian opponents were right to insist that anything erected to celebrate Christmas ought to give some priority to celebrating Christmas . And the council was right that , in the absence of consensus , it was better to allow no displays at all . The tragedy being that Gaylor 's campaign ended up destroying a perfectly wonderful tradition in the name of fairness . And that hardly seems fair . Unfortunately , Gaylor gets around almost as much as Santa Claus ; now she 's involved in an effort to take down a Jesus-shaped war memorial near a popular ski resort in Montana . There 's a thin line between this sort of secularist activism and the politics of personal taste . In Portsmouth , New Hampshire , a jewelry shop manager called the cops on Salvation Army bell ringers because the noise was `` raising her blood pressure and making her hate Christmas . '' In Colorado Springs , the Salvation Army was stopped from bell ringing because of a new ban on panhandling . What 's really happening is n't just a targeted , political war on Christmas but a more general battle for control of what goes on in the public sphere , especially around the holidays . Undoubtedly , some of this is motivated by anti-religious secularism . But it 's also the product of living in a crowded multicultural environment where everyone risks getting on each other 's nerves -- and we have to find better ways of getting along . One of the reasons why `` Happy Holidays '' has risen in use as an alternative seasonal greeting to `` Merry Christmas '' is simply that it helps avoid occasions of offense and confrontation . Religious conservatives complain that it 's a surrender to militant atheism . But if that 's the case then the surrender is widespread . George W. Bush 's White House cards wished everyone a happy `` holiday season '' and even Fox News has its own Holiday Wish List . If there is a solution to this controversy then perhaps it 's to try to treat it with a dash of humor and disdain . The Rev . Jonathan Morris was recently invited on `` Fox and Friends '' to unleash hell on the war on Christmas . Instead , he did the opposite . After pointing out that Christians have throughout the centuries taken much worse persecution ( and , I might add , dished out a bit , too ) he concluded , `` If our Christmas is going to be all about getting upset at people trying to take away Christmas , is n't that silly , too ? '' Amen , Father .
Tim Stanley : The problem with the current system is that it does not allow for a fair and open debate on any issue. This time , politics in mix , with White House , others using holidays to score points , he says . He says `` war '' really reflects failure to reconcile different interests in democratic society . Stanley : Battle is over what goes on in public sphere . One solution ? Have sense of humor .