OK, I don’t usually recommend pay sites or ones where you have to wade through an advertisement first but there is an article on Salon by Wil Wheaton (yes, that Wil Wheaton) which points out the real war on Christmas and on America’s families and culture being waged by O’Reilly, Gibson and the rest of the Hate America First crowd over at Faux News.

Visit Salon, watch the ad (or do something else while it is playing) and then read this article, it’s worth it.

An excerpt:

You know those optical illusion drawings, where you’re looking at a smiling man, then suddenly he’s become a werewolf? Faster than you could say “Fox News,” my dad was screaming at me, Bill O’Reilly-style.

“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth! He killed four …” — he stabbed at the air with four fingers on his left hand — “four people in cold blood and deserves! to! die!”

I briefly made eye contact with my stepson, Nolan, who sat just behind my father on my parents’ couch. His face flushed and he quickly looked away. My sister had stopped her channel surfing on a shopping network, and he looked awfully interested in putting a sapphire ring on easy-pay. While my dad continued to scream about biblical vengeance, I went into shock. Just minutes earlier, we’d stood together outside on the deck and laughed with each other as he congratulated me for a great finish I’d had the previous day at a poker tournament in Las Vegas. In fact, I’d cut my trip short, specifically so I wouldn’t miss the family Christmas.

What a difference five minutes makes. While he screamed at me, I wanted to ask, “Who are you, and what have you done with the man who raised me to be tolerant, patient, peaceful and charitable?” Instead, I said, as calmly as I could, “Dad, I just don’t believe in the death penalty. It is unevenly applied to poor people, and clearly doesn’t work as a deterrent.”

“It doesn’t work as a deterrent because they allow these scum to stay alive for 25 years before they give them what they deserve!” I hadn’t seen my dad this angry since I was a sophomore in high school and my friends and I woke up my mom after midnight one night because we got a little worked up in a Nintendo game of “Blades of Steel.”

Yep, thanks to the fine folks at Fox News we now have vitriolic tirades replacing civil discourse even within families. No longer can we have a calm conversation with that crotchety old conservative Uncle and laugh about it afterwards even as we still disagree. No longer can we interchangeably wish someone a Happy Holidays or a Merry Christmas as the mood strikes us, and as I’ve certainly done all of my life, without it becoming a political and/or theological statement.

Gibson-O’Reilly (two personalities easily conflated) have spent virtually all of their on-air time since Thanksgiving promoting Gibson’s book…er…I mean defending Christmas, by essentially waging war on America, Americans and any and all other holidays and celebrations that also occur this time of the year.

See, it really isn’t about defending Christmas at all (for one thing, no one has been attacking it), but it is about removing any references to the fact that what we are actually celebrating starting the last week of November through January 2nd is an entire season of holidays. So apparently Gibson-O’Reilly hate America, since you can’t use the term “happy holidays” to include Thanksgiving, that most American of holidays, and they hate any celebration of the New Year and they certainly don’t want anyone to acknowledge the existence of Hanukka (which I absolutely guarantee you was celebrated and honored by that guy born in Bethlehem 2000+ years ago) they take Kwanzaa as a direct insult, apparently to White America but they have enough sense of self-preservation to not say that on TV.

So, the reality of what this fundamentalist/evangelical/neo-conservative takeover of society is all about is now starting to become much clearer. America is entirely too inclusive for them, entirely too free to celebrate just any old holiday, entirely too tolerant of the free expression of religion (other than theirs) and entirely too celebratory of its own beginnings and history and so all of those things must be attacked, viciously and continuously, throughout a holiday season that used to be about sharing, caring, giving and honoring.

Way to go guys, you’re a credit to your ideology.