Whaddya mean, "Happy holidays?"

The last leaf has yet to fall from the tree and our Thanksgiving turkey is still mindlessly munching on his force-fed corn, steroids and antibiotics, but the joyful season is upon us.

It's the most wonderful time of the year
With the kids jingle belling
And everyone telling you "Be of good cheer"
It's the most wonderful time of the year
It's the hap-happiest season of all
With those holiday greetings and gay happy meetings
When friends come to call
It's the hap- happiest season of all

Bwahaha! It's not just the hap- hapiest season. It's war, war I tells ya. Barely a mention of "Christmases" in the song's entire lyrics [editor's note: we have no idea how the Vega chanced upon the lyrics in a site entitled "xfilesepisodes"].

"And gay happy meetings?" Is this an open attempt to turn Christmas into a same sex marriage rally?

Clearly, Christuns, it may be a time of "good cheer," but it is, more importantly, a time of war. A war on "secular humanists" who would BAN CHRISTMAS!

This week, the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group based in Scottsdale, Ariz., announced that its 800 cooperating attorneys have volunteered to handle without fee complaints about "improper attempts to censor the celebration of Christmas in schools and on public property."

In 2004, the second year of its "Christmas Project," affiliated attorneys sent a detailed memo on ADF's view of Christmas and constitutional law to 7,000 school districts. The 2005 effort, already under way, adds city officials.

A similar information campaign is being waged by Liberty Counsel, another Christian legal group based in Orlando, Fla., and the Christian Educators Association International, representing 8,000 public school teachers.

The topic also is the subject of a polemic by the Fox News Channel's John Gibson that is selling briskly: "The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought."

Gibson, who calls himself a "non-practicing Christian," notes that his Jewish son researched the book. He says agitation against Christmas observance comes primarily from "secularists, so-called humanists, trial lawyers, cultural relativists and liberal, guilt-wracked Christians."

Oh yeah, those people. But I think the part about "selling briskly" is rather telling. This wouldn't be about Mammon, would it?

Under Freedom Forum First Amendment Center sponsorship, the ACLU has come to agreement with evangelical and other religious groups on minimal rules about school religious issues. On holidays, the accord says schools may celebrate secular aspects and "objectively teach about their religious aspects" but not observe them as religious events.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State also endorsed the accord.

Spokesman Rob Boston said "about 95 percent of the whining from the far right" over Christmas is for fundraising purposes. "They're trying to get people worked up so they will think Christmas is being removed from public life," Boston said. "There isn't any evidence that's happening."

As the young Jesus once so famously said, "There's a sucker born every minute."