Apparently the GOP, busy fighting its Global War on Terror and its concomitant War on the Geneva Conventions as well as the ancillary War on Organized Labor, is making time to fight a rearguard battle against the War on Christmas. Michelle Malkin and like-minded nativity-worshippers everywhere are said to be besieged on all sides by the encroaching forces of secularism, Judaism, Muhammadism and assorted other malign "isms" seeking to overthrow the rightful hegemony of the American consumerist celebration of Christ's birth.

The biggest pitched battle of this war, the Christian Stalingrad if you will, is over the two magical words "Merry Christmas." Angry Republicans, not content with controlling all three branches of government, as well as a majority of state governorships, are cowering in fear that their beloved December blessing will be expunged in favor of the anodyne "Happy Holidays," which, translated into radical conservative, means "Abort the babies, marry the gays, empower the feminazis and replace Charlie Brown's Christmas with Harry Potter and the Satanic Paganist's Stone."

I regret to report the failure of this left-wing plot to install Maoist holiday values in place of those traditions derived from Christ's valiant fight for expanded department store hours on the eve of his birth. Just this past Sunday afternoon, at a Jesus Day gathering on my block, local left-wing agitators masquerading as residents of Philadelphia wished me a "Merry Christmas." I stared them down to draw out the obvious hipster irony with which they delivered this besieged holiday bromide, but found only deadpan seriousness.

The fact that most people are still willing to incur wrath by uttering the dreaded Merry Christmas greeting has not stopped hysterical lunatics in the GOP establishment from launching a series of Save Christmas campaigns. The Alliance Defense Fund, for instance, is directing an operation that tells people "Merry Christmas: It's OK to Say It," as if there were Secular Storm Troopers just waiting to assail the 95 percent of Americans who celebrate Christmas by spending themselves into debt to please their distant relatives.

Last year, during the annual Cultural Wedge Issue Fund Drive, Bill O'Reilly lamented, "If they could, secularists would cancel Christmas as a holiday. That's how much they fear the exposition of the philosophy of Jesus." Now, as a card-carrying member of the Godless Heathen Conspiracy, I can tell you that there isn't very much I fear from the philosophy of Jesus, particularly because a close reading of said philosophy would expose Republican dogma as selfish nonsense.

Judging from such indicators as the nonstop rotation of "Santa Baby" on Sunny 104.5, there is clearly no liberal plot to destroy Christmas, and that's just what's bothering me. It's like when your girlfriend thinks you're cheating on her when you haven't been doing anything but watching Crossing Jordan while she's at yoga. If you're going to be presumed guilty of adultery, you might as well make a few trips to Delilah's. If the deranged conservative punditocracy thinks there's a war on Christmas, maybe there should be. I say, "Bring it on."

Americans are very good at declaring wars on things. For 30 years now, we've been fighting drugs in a dirty, drawn-out war of attrition that has claimed hundreds of billions of dollars and has succeeded only in reducing the price of heroin and cocaine. The War on Terrorism produced 2004, also known as the worst year in the history of international terrorism. I'm sure that a liberal War on Christmas can produce equally illustrious results.

I say send Santa to Guantanamo. Charge the Grinch as an enemy combatant and hold him without trial or counsel for as long as it takes to win this thing. Set up a secret gulag of CIA prisons in Romania and Moldova to hold anyone who puts a plastic glowing Jesus on his front lawn. Make sure every wannabe grade-school Barbara Streisand who belts out "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" or "O Holy Night" in a public school can be extraordinarily rendered to Syria at the drop of a chador. It's all part of the conflict with Jesusofascism, a life-and-death struggle akin to WWII or the battle against Dan Rather.

You better choose sides now. The holidays are fast approaching, and you're either with us or against us. Or against them. Or something.

David Faris is a Ph.D. student at Penn. If you would like to respond to this Slant or submit one of your own (750 words), e-mail duane@citypaper.net.