North Easton, Massachusetts

The War on Christmas, in my little non-traditional family, annually takes on the characteristics of a drawn-out, give-no-quarter guerilla campaign. Sadly, I feel compelled to report that us grinches - OK, the grinch that is me - seem to be losing this internecine conflict.

Certain elements of the body politic claim that other elements, of a Bolshevik persuasion, are trying to exterminate, or more accurately denature, the year-end, seven-week holiday that is Christmas. We seem not to be making much headway in that effort. This perhaps because our opponents use tactics that are both demoralizing and wantonly cruel. We are carpet-bombed with canned cheer, some of it dating from the middle of the last century, and none the less distracting from age; I'm referring, since it's blasting about me at the moment like so much napalm, to Connie Francis and her spirit-crushing rendition of 'Baby's First Christmas'.

In theory, there should be no more favorable battleground in Bill O'Reilly's war. I'm halfway between Martha's Vineyard and Beacon Hill, in a district represented in Congress by Barney Frank. If there's a culture war going on, the front lines should be running rather close to right here.

Thing is, they're not. Frankly, if my own state - largely immobilized due to quantities of food and drink that could well maintain a minor country somewhere - is any indication, people aren't able to rouse the energy needed to rip the little baby Jesus from his creche. It would appear that people are more pre-occupied with the exertions required to keep in a semblance of order countless sugar-fueled toddlers. That, and the traffic jams at the malls, which to all the world look like the exodus from Egypt, only with vastly greater mounds of plunder.

So as much as I would like to report victory in the War on Christmas, I'm afraid that would be premature. In fact, that war seems to be going about as well as that other conflict started from inside the beltway of Whoville, D.C.

Happy Holidays.