The fight I’m about to chronicle is a deeply personal one, and its winners and losers are yet to be determined. The combatants include my wife, my brother, my sister-in-law and me: two Muslims, two Jews and a Babylon-sized grudge against carols, Christmas trees and fruit cakes.
Behind our cries of "happy holidays!" hides an unyielding urge to expand Hanukah by an additional five days. Or perhaps even match Ramadan’s month to form a combined mega-holiday that would massively eclipse Christmas’s measly twelve days.
My brother and his Turkish wife are zealously fighting the Southern front of this war in West Palm Beach, Florida, over one-thousand miles away. Last December, they unloaded a fusillade on Christmas in the form of cards that featured a portrait with red, green and holiday spirit.
And they unleashed this merciless attack on G-d fearing Jews, Muslims and Christians alike. Our war on Christmas is religion-blind. The following is my kid’s cunning aunt and uncle plotting this year’s broadside on Christmas from their home base in Turkey.
The cards they sent out last year had a highly-professional quality, revealing diabolical forethought that inspired my wife to fire her own interfaith salvos this year, loaded with Christmassy family photo and tree.
My wife, son and I are attacking Christmas on the war's Northern front, but we have help from some unlikely allies—my wife’s Christian aunt and grandmother. Every year, we brave the Kandaharesque cold to assemble in the DC or Philly suburbs, where we conspire to exchange gifts, stuff our faces and enjoy the company of loved ones.
If you are protective over the Christmas holiday but made it this far, I commend you. But now might be a good time to exit this diary lest you risk becoming irreparably offended.
The following is a picture of our dog, Mr. Muggles, mocking Christmas: