Three updates on the ongoing War On Christmas: First up, Tom Blumer explores when the C-word is acceptable for use by leftwing journalists:

It seems beyond dispute that there is a strong bias against using the word “Christmas” to describe not only the shopping season, as noted above, but also events, parades, and festivals that happen during the Christmas season. There is, however, a bit of an exception — “Christmas” is a word that is much more acceptable to use when “Scrooge” employers are letting people go.

East is east, and west is west, and in both we take offense at anything: Santas saying "Ho ho ho," teddy bears called Mohammed. And yet the difference is very telling: The now-annual Santa lawsuits in the "war on Christmas" and the determination to abolish even such anodyne expressions of faith as the Pledge of Allegiance are assaults on the very possibility of a common culture. By contrast, the teddy bear rubbish is a crude demonstration of cultural muscle intended to cow and intimidate. When east meets west, when offended Muslims find themselves operating in Western nations, they discover that both techniques are useful: Some march in the streets, Khartoum-style, calling for the pope to be beheaded, others use the mechanisms of the West's litigious, perpetual grievance culture to harass opponents into silence.

Perhaps somewhere in Sydney there's a woman who's genuinely offended by hearing Santa say "ho ho ho" just as those New Hampshire atheists claim to be genuinely offended by the Pledge of Allegiance. But their complaints are frivolous and decadent, and more determined groups are using the patterns they've established to shut down debate on things we should be talking about. The ability to give and take offense is what separates free societies from Sudan.

But isn't that rather culturally insensitive of the Surgeon General? Not to mention out of his jurisdiction, unless the US is claiming the North Pole as our 51st state. And even if we were, wouldn't Santa be grandfathered, due to his centuries of living up there?

(Don't miss this comment by one of Jules' readers, which puts the Cold Civil War and its northern front into sharp perspective.)

Related: Which stores dare to use the C-word? "The Attack on Christmas 2007" lists the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly on the retail front of the American overculture's War On Christmas.

Update: And speaking of taking No Offense just smidge too far, just click.