Rummel: There’s no war on Christmas in Seattle

During a speech in October, President Donald Trump announced he was gearing up for war.

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Any guesses on which war that was? Was he expecting conflict with North Korea beyond exchanging threats? No. What about something a little more metaphorical, like declaring war on drug overdose deaths? Closer, but still no.

Trump was gearing up for the War on Christmas. Here’s exactly what he said as the keynote speaker of the Heritage Foundation’s President’s Club meeting.

So let’s give our country the best Christmas present of all, massive tax relief and speaking of Christmas, yes. You want to hear it? Speaking, I just, you know, talking about Christmas presents, I’ll give you a bigger Christmas present, you’re going to be saying Merry Christmas again, OK. You’re going to say Merry Christmas. You know, you go to the stores, and they have the red walls and they have the snow and they even have the sleigh and the whole thing, they don’t have Merry Christmas. They don’t have Merry Christmas. I want them to say Merry Christmas everybody, Happy New Year, Happy Holidays, but I want Merry Christmas. We’re going to say it again, it’s happening already, you know it. You know it’s happening again.

I was so infuriated by this speech when I first heard it earlier this fall. Christmas isn’t in any danger, there’s no war going on in opposition to the holiday.

Here’s how I know there isn’t a War on Christmas. Over the weekend, for the first time, I attended Seattle’s SantaCon event.

If you’ve never been, basically hundreds of people dressed as Santa or other Christmas characters descend on downtown. There’s a route of bars and food locations people follow.

On the Seattle SantaCon website, they expected 1,500 to attend. I’m not sure exactly how many people showed up, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they surpassed their expectations. As we walked toward one of the bars on the route, “Santas” walking the opposite direction warned us they were turning people away because they were beyond capacity (for the uninitiated, everyone that attends SantaCon is referred to as “Santa”).

As a reminder, all this took place in Seattle, the icon of progressiveness and political correctness. We were a bunch of liberals celebrating the holiday we happen to celebrate in December. We also weren’t alone, SantaCon events are held in cities all over the country every year.

That’s what I don’t understand about the War on Christmas myth. No one is preventing anyone from openly celebrating the holiday, if anything, some of the people at SantaCon were celebrating way too hard.

If there is a War on Christmas, Christmas is definitely winning.

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