Remember the 'War on Christmas'? I Kinda Miss It

Remember the “War on Christmas”?

Yes, that early-2000s fever dream when Fox News convinced half the country that “Happy Holidays” was basically Sharia law in a festive font. A time when the right blamed “secularists” for everything, but everyone understood the subtext: post-9/11 panic, a dash of Islamophobia, and a preview of the endlessly escalating culture war machine we’d all be trapped in forever.

It felt like a joke at the time, before the Overton Window shifted so far to the right that it’s now basically on Mars.

For a brief, shimmering moment, the biggest culture-war emergency was whether saying “Merry Christmas” loudly enough could protect the republic from the creeping menace of inclusive greetings. Accused serial sexual harasser Bill O’Reilly was one of the creators of the “War on Christmas” nonsense, but now it’s become a forever war.

Honestly? I miss that absurd little era — not because it was harmless (it wasn’t), but because it was, in hindsight, the training-wheels version of what was coming.

https://thebarbedwire.com/2025/12/11/missing-the-war-on-christmas-simpler-times/