O'Reilly and the War on Christmas

November 21, 2005 - CPLA Exclusive

BOSTON - Today, in one of the most brazen attacks in the War on Christmas, Secularist para-troopers stormed the Prudential Mall in downtown Boston in an all-out attack on retailers promoting the Christian holiday. The pagan troops went store to store and dismantled any display that referred to Christmas while holding store employees at bay with automatic weapons.

The assault lasted about 45 minutes and when it was over, the Secularist troops forced retail employees to carry their destroyed Christmas displays outside to Boylston Street where they were piled together and set alight to form a bonfire that could be seen for miles. The atheistic horde even had the audacity to throw Bibles into the flames. The leader of the Secularist mission, General Robert Ingersoll, stated “attacks like this are needed to make a strong statement about the dangers of Christmas in American society today. Don’t be surprised if you see more of these attacks in the coming days elsewhere in America.”

The question now becomes, how should America react to the upsurge in violence in the War on Christmas?

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Obviously, the above “story” is a bit far-fetched ... or is it? For the second year in a row, Bill O’Reilly has been talking up the “War on Christmas” on his nightly television show, The O’Reilly Factor. This year, O’Reilly is focusing on retailers and their use of the dreaded “Christmas” word in their marketing and advertising. According to O'Reilly, retailers who don’t use Christmas in store displays, etc. are deemed to be exclusionary and hostile toward Christians, and can expect to lose millions of shoppers this holiday season.

Isn’t O’Reilly being a little paranoid here? A sales and marketing executive who was a guest on “The Factor” told the pundit that the point of the "Happy Holidays" marketing theme wasn’t to exclude Christians, but to include everyone, regardless of faith. That didn’t fly with O’Reilly and he told his guest that he thought he was crazy.

On his November 18th show, O’Reilly brought up the subject again with a far friendlier guest, fellow Fox News host John Gibson. Gibson actually has a book on this very topic and based on the transcript of the interview, is even more on the fringe of this subject than O’Reilly is. What this really boils down to is two old guys who aren’t comfortable with how America has changed and is continuing to change. They want everything in America to be just as it was when they were kids. Don’t we all feel that way sometimes? I know that I’m nostalgic about sports from my childhood. However, their paranoia drives them to the belief that their “way of life” is being marginalized. Claims of hostility towards Christianity sounds a lot like the people who organized Justice Sunday and said that “people of faith” were being discriminated against. Clearly, the accusation of discrimination is a powerful tool in mobilizing one’s base and O’Reilly isn’t bashful about calling out to his listeners to enlist them in his battles.

I suppose that this resistance to change is simply an indication as to why Bill O’Reilly is a conservative television host for Fox News. However, his resistance to change has manifested itself into a vision of sub-plots against his core beliefs that actually doesn't exist. I almost feel sorry for the man.