The War on the War on Christmas

This latest addition to the War on Christmas is brought to you by the heathens... literally.

One of my more conservative pagan friends was posting a supposed quote by Ben Stein.  At first, I found myself enjoying the quote, mostly agreeing with it, and finding Ben Stein to have a nice, moderate approach that I would expect from him.  Then things got weird...

I couldn't understand why Ben Stein, an intellectual and a very Jewish man, was going on a Christian Conservative rant.  Yeah, that got my suspicions raised, but luckily this was a lot easier to debunk than the last post.  Snopes popped up almost immediately with this beautiful gem:

Snopes: Confessions for the Holidays

Everyone can now sleep well knowing that Ben Stein hasn't turned into a Christian Conservative politico hellbent on bringing back God to our schools and corporal punishment to our homes.

Also, THERE IS NO WAR ON CHRISTMAS.

war on christmas

 It's that time of year again.  When the conservatives post "War on Christmas" tripe all over your Facebook newsfeed.

This year's article started as a Fox News opinion piece:  http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/12/05/school-bans-christmas-trees-colors-red-green/

Supposedly a school in the Frisco school district was having a holiday party that banned 'Merry Christmas', Christmas trees, and the colors red and green.  It's pretty much the holy grail of "War on Christmas" stories.  Think of the children!

It seemed a little too good to be true, so I tried to find other news sources that were covering the story.  But every single news article I found could trace its source for information back to that very same Fox News article:

http://inagist.com/all/408817627578896384/
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t1009590/
http://conservativehideout.com/2013/12/07/nichols-elementary-school-frisco-texas-bans-christmas-trees-even-colors-red-green/

There was also a suspicious trend with all these news sources that were covering the story... hmm.

So aside from conservative blogs, religious blogs, or racist blogs, there really wasn't any well known, legitimate news source covering the story.

And then, in a funny twist of fate, I stumbled upon a story from 2005 in which Bill O'Reilly falsely reported a similar story.  I was just about to give up my search and write this off as some stupid misunderstanding or hoax, but without proof, when this article single-handedly became my impetus to resume my search.  Surely if I could find this gem, I could dig up more.

And that's when I found the Frisco Independent School District's official response to Fox News' accusations:

http://www.friscoisd.org/news/2013/12/05/holidays-in-schools


Enjoy the read, guys.  And tl;dr?  THERE IS NO WAR ON CHRISTMAS