What planet is she on?

In yesterday's Washington Examiner I read a column by Janine Turner that blew my mind. She wrote

Warning: I am going to write something radical.

Merry Christmas.

There I did it.

During the holiday season whether I am at work, at school, at a mall or the grocery store, I am reduced to feeling like a zealot when I utter those two words. As I scurry out the door, I have to resist the impulse to hide like a prairie dog before I am caught by the holiday Political Correctness police.

Though, who needs the police? The look of fear in the eyes of the clerks and other patrons speaks volumes. It's as if at any moment the emergency alarm will be pulled and pandemonium will ensue.

Like a siren in a nuclear power plant, I am exposed. I am a traitor to the New American Way. What is the New American Way? Intimidation. Conformity. Muzzling of free speech. Denial of religion.

As I journey home and put up a Christmas tree, my traditional warm and fuzzy religious experience is disturbed by an annoying angst that a Christmas tree is offensive. If I am a comrade to the cause and following the New American Way, my Christmas tree will now be a "Holiday tree."

As I stand back and admire the twinkling lights, I experience a nagging guilt that I am somehow a religious extremist.

Christmas is under attack. Christians are being silenced by the code of Saul Alinsky, an insidious intimidation creates a new pattern of thought, like a river creates a canyon.

Liberals have perverted the First Amendment to meet their agenda denying others the true intent of its meaning. It's no wonder that they consider the Constitution an ugly word. The Constitution holds them accountable. The New American Way works only by denying it or distorting it.

The First Amendment restricts the government from mandating a religion but it also guarantees the free exercise of religion, not to mention, freedom of speech. Does this only apply to atheistic liberals?

Christians are being denied freedoms to experience Christmas. This is the black and white of the issue.

If children are caught mentioning Christmas in school, they become outcasts, a disturbance, an obstacle to the New American Way. Children who are Christians are being shamed into submission.

Yet, the liberal elite has it all wrong. We are not a country of clones. We are a country of individualism and independence and uniqueness.

Is this not the true intent of the First Amendment? The liberal elite is getting away with blatant attacks on individual freedoms.

The irony is that the liberals pride themselves on their right to provocative uses of freedom such as immersing a cross in urine. Yet Christians can't say, "Merry Christmas" and children can't hand out Christmas cards in school.

All children of all faiths should be allowed to exchange greeting cards that honor their religion. It is the restriction of this freedom, or the mandating of one religion over another, that is wrong.

Things are frighteningly askew in American culture. This has occurred because by nature conservatives are reserved, respectful. Meanwhile, the loud, liberal and loquacious Left have dominated the dialogue.

Christians, and anyone else who holds religious freedom sacred, need to step up to the Christmas tree this year and embrace it for what it is: an expression of the Christian religion. This act does not deny other religions. It merely is an expression of one of many. Should we not be tolerant and respectful of all religions in America?

Christians, or any religion, should not be denied this right anywhere - in the workplace, in the school, in the mall, in the town square.

As Christians uphold their constitutional rights, they also honor other religions. It is our distinguishing quality that make us America. It is our acceptance of these that makes us Americans.

Merry Christmas.

When I read it I thought, “What planet is she on? She can't wish people ‘Merry Christmas’?” I can't get away from Christmas stuff. Yesterday I went into Barnes and Noble and the overhead speakers were playing “Oh come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord.” Who is preventing her from doing Christmas things — while I want to have them put out of my life completely, and I can't avoid them? Really!