It’s that time of year again. Call me old-fashioned, but this is my favorite time of year. Each year the arrival of Thanksgiving means it’s time to renew the War on Christmas.

Yes, yes, I know — you’ve been seeing Holiday Christmas decorations and advertisements since Hallowe’en. It’s understandable that you might think the season of War on Christmas has been underway for a few weeks. But no, I’m a traditionalist; if waiting until after Thanksgiving to start the War on Christmas was good enough for our forefathers a decade and a half ago, it’s good enough for me. Once you abandon tradition, chaos follows.

What makes this War on Christmas season so special? It’s because this is the time of year in which we’re reminded that some Christians are incapable of maintaining their faith in Christ without the constant validation of their belief system through advertisements from major American retailers. FOX News and Rush Limbaugh have convinced some folks that unless clerks and cashiers mechanically repeat the phrase “Merry Christmas” the religious significance of the holy day will be diminished. Bill O’Reilly has taught them that every time somebody says “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings” a bell stops ringing and an angel loses its wings.

Despite the fact that in every city, town, and village in the United States there’s a tax-free Christian church, they want you to believe Christianity is under attack. Despite the fact that the birthday of the Christ Child is a federal holiday, they want you to believe Christmas in danger. When you’re standing in the checkout line at a Big Box store to buy products made by cheap-ass child labor in some Blakeian ‘dark Satanic Mill’ outside of Mumbai, they want you to believe the real sin takes place if the cashier fails to say “Have a Merry Christmas.” They want Christians to be afraid.

And me…I’m happy to help. I don’t have anything against Christians (seriously, some of my best friends are Christians). But I am against stupidity. And c’mon, it’s hard to find a better example of stupidity than the War on Christmas. I sorta kinda feel anybody stupid enough to believe Christianity in the U.S. is at risk deserves to be made uncomfortable.

That makes me a cheerful soldier in the War on Christmas. Starting Friday, I will clatter merrily about town saying “Happy Holidays” and “Season’s Greetings” to friends and strangers alike. I will do my part in the War on Christmas. It’s my duty as a good citizen.

You’re either with Christmas — or you’re with the terrorists!

In fact, it pleases me to slightly misquote the estimable Ebenezer Scrooge: “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A Happy Holiday to everybody. Season’s Greetings to all the world. Hallo there. Whoop. Hallo.”