Ah, yes. Seems like only a week ago that Bill O’Reilly was on the Tonight Show railing against Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee for labeling the statehouse tree a “Holiday Tree” instead of a “Christmas Tree.” (Actually, it was a week ago.)

One of the most vicious weapons used in the ‘war on Christmas’ is replacing the word “Christmas” with “holiday.” If someone wishes you “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas,” they’re probably a heathen liberal atheist and you’re supposed to smite them on sight.

I’m not quite sure what an evergreen tree has to do with the baby Jesus, but since decorating trees became the fashion 15 or 16 centuries after the Savior’s birth, the two became inexorably twined, and it now amounts to a war when you try to call that tree anything but a Christmas tree.

No one seems to know precisely when the first office Christmas party occurred – I suspect in the U.S. it was probably sometime after 1885, when Christmas became a federal holiday and the common-man business actually started featuring things resembling offices.