Well, it’s Christmas time again, and, like the last several years, the war on the war on Christmas is in full swing. All I really have to say about that is simply this: Please, please, please, JUST SHUT UP!!!!!

This year, the big controversy seems to be that we’re not allowed to play “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”. My Facebook feed is filled to bursting with three variations on that theme:

1. Very, very sad people complaining about how terrible it is that we can’t play that song in today’s politically correct America, and what’s this country coming to anyway?
2. Smug, self-righteous people declaring that they’re going to continue to play it, regardless of what those ridiculous Social Justice Warriors say!
3. Intellectual (or, even more frequently, stupid) defenses of the song, laboriously analyzing the context of the time in which it was written, what certain phrases meant back then, blah, blah, blah.

What no one is mentioning, is that nobody said you can’t play it anyway! As far as I can tell, four radio stations removed it from their holiday play list, and everyone lost their minds. That’s four stations out of the approximately 15,000 radio stations in the U.S. The horror!

Now I’ll be the first to admit that I personally like the song. I don’t know what it has to do with Christmas, but I do like the song. I’m not sure why Christians (it does seem to be Christians – or at least Facebook Christians- who are so offended by the alleged ban) are so upset about the absence of a song which, if you take the most harmless interpretation of it, is basically about two unmarried people trying to justify getting (consensually) laid.

It seems a weird thing for Christians to be upset about. 

Of course, it doesn’t stop there. I recently saw a meme insisting that if you think Santa should be gender neutral, you should delete him (the meme poster) now, because he doesn’t need that kind of stupidity in his life.

I didn’t even know that was a thing, much less something that I needed to be concerned about. Of course, it turns out that it’s not a thing, and not something that I need to be concerned about.

Apparently some logo company polled 4,000 people in the U.S. and U.K. about “rebranding” Santa Claus, and 17% liked the idea of a gender neutral Santa. The same “poll” found that 21% wanted Santa to be thinner, and 20% want Santa to have tattoos. 

That’s 680 people out of 4,000 of the kind of meatheads, knuckleheads, and boneheads that actually take polls from logo companies. In contrast, 100% of the people I know are too busy making a living and dealing with everyday life to bother taking any kind of polls at all.

Now there’s a controversy surrounding “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”. People are freaking out because some hippie liberal Social Justice Warriors had the audacity to criticize aspects of the beloved classic Christmas show.

Nobody seems to have noticed that pretty much all of the things the show has been criticized for are exactly the things that we all noticed when we were kids: That the other reindeer, elves, and even Santa, WERE dicks to Rudolph and Hermey, and anyone else who didn’t fit their ideas of what was correct and proper, right up until they needed Rudolph, and then well hey, he was A-OK!

I find it ironic that the only people who actually seem to be offended by any of this are the same ones who, all too often, preface their own posts with something along the lines of “I know this is going to offend some of you but I’m not afraid, ’cause I’m speaking the truth” (there are a thousand variations on that theme).

I haven’t heard or seen a single person, liberal or otherwise, who is actually suggesting banning Rudolph, or “Baby, It’s Cold Outside, or advocating that Santa should be anything other than a jolly, bearded, fat man in a red suit. 

It’s enough to make me wonder who the real “snowflakes” are.

Oh, and by the way, Merry Christmas!