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I realize that people all over the world have bigger problems, but frankly I can’t feel their pain. For some reason I only feel my own. I’m lucky that way.

-Scott Adams: The Dilbert Blog: My Huge Problems

Bill O’Reilly and the rest of Fox News would like you to believe that there is a vast contingent of the American public who wants to ban Christmas, that we need to save Christmas from liberals and from American retailers who say “Happy Holidays.”

Before all that, however, came a much more effective war on Christmas, from the Puritans:

Liberal plots notwithstanding, the Americans who succeeded in banning the holiday were the Puritans of 17^th-century Massachusetts. Between 1659 and 1681, Christmas celebrations were outlawed in the colony, and the law declared that anyone caught “observing, by abstinence from labor, feasting or any other way any such days as Christmas day, shall pay for every such offense five shillings.” Finding no biblical authority for celebrating Jesus’ birth on Dec. 25, the theocrats who ran Massachusetts regarded the holiday as a mere human invention, a remnant of a heathen past. They also disapproved of the rowdy celebrations that went along with it. “How few there are comparatively that spend those holidays … after an holy manner,” the Rev. Increase Mather lamented in 1687. “But they are consumed in Compotations, in Interludes, in playing at Cards, in Revellings, in excess of Wine, in Mad Mirth.

A brief visit to dictionary.com tells me that compotation is the act of drinking or “tippling” together and that Interludes are a “short farcical entertainment performed between the acts of a medieval mystery or morality play.” It does not, however, tell me what “Mad Mirth” is. But it’s basically clear that Puritans are generally against happiness on Christmas, regardless of its source.

On the other hand, there is something to what the Fox News guys and the “put Christ back in Christmas” advocates are saying. Here’s a shot of my paper’s “Faith and Values” section this morning:

The section I marked in blue is the only section which I would have expected: A column by Billy Graham reminding us why we celebrate Christmas. The yellow section is a column about Christmas that does not mention the word “Christ” once. And the section marked in green, which takes between 2/3 and 3/4 of the page, is the poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas.” In the Faith and Values section.

Perhaps the editors are Santaists!