[ed. note: this is a reprint of the famous 1897 column from the national review online. we think it is as relevant to today’s issues as it was back then]
we take great pleasure in answering at once the communication below, expressing at the same time great gratification that its author is numbered among the friends of nro:
“i am 8 years old. some of my liberal friends say there is no war on christmas. they say it’s just another code-word-filled wedge distraction to keep us from discussing real issues like iraq, the deficit, the patriot act, katrina and the administrations abysmal record on human rights. papa says, ‘if you see it on the internets, it’s so.’ please tell me the truth, is there a war on christmas?”
virginia o’scamlon
virginia, your liberal friends are wrong. they have been affected by the secularism of a secular age. they do not believe except what michael moore tells them. they think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their godless minds.
yes, virginia, there is a war on christmas.
it exists as certainly as lesbian feminazi’s who want to abort all the babies in the world exist, it exists as certainly as communist jewish pinkos who want to force children to worship satan in the schools exist. alas! how dreary would the world be if there were no war on christmas! it would be as dreary as if there were no loofas or falafels. there would be no unquestioning faith in republicans, no pollack jokes, no unfettered greed to make tolerable this tenuous economy. the eternal light with which childishness fills the american dream would be extinguished.
not believe in the war on christmas! you might as well not believe in the war on terror. you might get your papa to hire men to watch all the malls during december to catch godless communists trying to force people to say “kwanzaa hannukah ramadan,” but even if you didn’t see anybody try to wrestle christ away from the true believers at the gap, what would that prove? nobody ever sees secular heathens actually try to drink the blood of christian children, but that is no sign there is no war on christmas. the most real things in the world are those that neither logical men nor rush limbaugh can see. did you ever see jesus ride a dinosaur? of course not, but that’s no proof that he didn’t. nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are available only to the truly faithful, who shall delight in watching their enemies be smitten down in flames when the lord takes his rightful place in the mall.
you can tear apart a david brooks argument and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the most evil liberal, nor even the united strength of all the hateful secularists and the aclu and all godless jews who ever lived could ever tear apart. only undying allegiance to talk radio, complete loyalty to fox news and our beloved leader, george w. bush, can push aside that curtain and view the eternal joy of the beauty of the faithful, rejoicing by god’s side as the evil-doers burn in torment, including those who watch the daily show and listen to al franken.
is the war on christmas real? ah, virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real.
no war on christmas? thank god it lives forever and ever, as long as filthy multi-culturalistic pedophiles want to keep christ out of the malls in december. a thousand years from now, virginia, nay, 6,000 years from now, because the earth itself is only 6,000 years old, the war on christmas will continue to make glad the heart of neocons all over.