Our Founding Fathers tried to keep Christmas out of America. They Found it to be Un-Christian.

The American Family Association is leading a boycott of the chain store Target for not using the words "Merry Christmas" in its advertising. (Target denies it has an anti-Merry-Christmas policy.) The Catholic League boycotted Wal-Mart in part over the way its Web site treated searches for "Christmas." Bill O'Reilly, the Fox network anchor who last year started a "Christmas Under Siege" campaign, has a chart on his Web site of stores that use the phrase "Happy Holidays," along with a poll that asks, "Will you shop at stores that do not say 'Merry Christmas'?"

This campaign - which is being hyped on Fox and conservative talk radio - is an odd one. Christmas remains ubiquitous, and with its celebrators in control of most branches of government, it hardly lacks for powerful supporters. There is also something perverse, when Christians are being jailed for discussing the Bible in Saudi Arabia and slaughtered in Sudan, about spending so much energy on stores that sell "holiday trees.

The Puritans considered Christmas un-Christian, and hoped to keep it out of America. They could not find Dec. 25 in the Bible and insisted that the date derived from Saturnalia, the Roman heathens' wintertime celebration.

Well isn't that interesting? Once again the conservative's desire to ram their agenda down our throat results in them absolutely making up a conflict and then accusing some phantom group of attacking some American value to get us all riled up. Morons!

You know personally I love Christmas! I love buying and receiving presents. I love attending or throwing Christmas parties. And I like the increased kindness that it tends to bring out in everybody around us.

Now being a heathen I don't go anywhere near a church. I just don't spend all day thinking about Jesus. I do, however, sing Christmas songs and some of them have religious themes. This is probably the closest I get to embracing Christianity all year long. And I am not offended by it.

I am aware that there are others who find the Christmas holiday a little annoying. I remember overhearing a conversation between to guys where one asked the other what he had done for Christmas only to be rebuffed with "I am Jewish, stupid!". So I tend to know who my audience is before I wish anybody a Merry Christmas.

You have to admit saying "Happy Holidays" is safer.