The American War on Christmas, like the British one, relied on a grab-bag of tenuous stories that crumbled on closer analysis. O'Reilly was forced to apologize on air for suggesting that a school district in Texas had banned red-and-green clothing. Meanwhile, Gibson railed against the decision to call the Capitol's Christmas tree a "Holiday tree" — even though, by the time his book was published, the decision had been reversed.
This week's survey by the employment law firm Peninsula, suggesting that 74 percent of British employers have banned Christmas decorations for fear of offending non-Christians, seems similarly beset with problems. Even the Christian Muslim Forum accepts that the key question — "Do you admit to banning Christmas decorations because you are worried about offending other faiths?" — seems pointedly phrased, and several follow-up questions seem designed to steer respondents in an anti-Christmas direction. Even if the fear is real, one might reasonably attribute it precisely to the newspapers' provocative campaigns against the alleged War on Christmas. (After all — as everyone involved in the argument agrees — it's not as if there's any track record of anybody actually taking legal action because they were offended.) Finally, the survey asks: "Are you aware of your legal requirement to celebrate all faiths?" But according to the UK industrial conciliation service Acas, there is no such obligation.
The Christian Muslim Forum's letter to councils did not provide any examples of the purported de-Christianisation of Christmas, and Julian Bond, the group's director of management and communication, seems equally reluctant to do so. "There have been incidents," he says. "I was looking them up on the Internet the other day. There was one from a hospital in Scotland, where they'd received some CDs of Christmas carols, and some obviously mentioned the baby Jesus, and the hospital said it wasn't appropriate." But, he concedes, "it does all seem to have been more prevalent in previous years. It does seem to have disappeared this year." Does the forum plan to compile a list of examples of the war being waged on Christmas? "We haven't published anything like that," Bond says. "It's difficult to get hold of."
He goes on: "You know, we were in Birmingham for a meeting the other day, and there's a big Merry Christmas banner in the middle of New Street." So is anybody at all trying to abolish Christmas this year? "I haven't come across any examples of anyone doing it this year," he replies. "No."
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