Wish Me A Merry Christmas - Attack on Christmas: “War” Stories

Below you will find a number of true stories of attacks on Christmas that have successfully been waged in public places across America. While you may be able to relate to some of these stories in your own life, others will be surprising and, sometimes, even shocking. Reading these truthful events helps to educate us all as to the true attacks being launched as part of the "war on Christmas" and also helps motivate us to peacefully work for the reemergence of prominent Christmas symbols and celebration across the nation. These excerpts come from Fox News Anchor John Gibson's book, The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought, Copyright 2005, Sentinel HC.

Have you experienced your own "war" story that you would like to share? Contact us to tell us about your experience and to see if your story can be featured on this webpage.

The Friendship Tree
It's Worse Than You Thought

The Friendship Tree

Christmas was in the air, and the four-year-old’s father noticed the seasonal artwork from preschool piling up on the kitchen table. Among the wrinkled watercolor paintings from art class were sheets of paper bearing clearly recognizable images. On one sheet his son had painted a menorah, and on another, seven candles painted red, green, and black.

The father asked his son about the menorah and the boy answered accurately, if not completely, that it involved a miracle. The father nodded his approval. As for the red and black and green candles the boy said it was Kwanzaa. The father thought there ought to be a painting of a Christmas tree if his son were painting menorahs and Kwanzaa candles. But his son had painted no watercolors of a Christmas tree.

…[This] bothered the father…why was there no watercolor painting of a Christmas tree among his preschool artwork?

The father had been looking forward to a picture of a Christmas tree from art class to teach his son how to spell the word Christmas. But instead of teaching his son a lesson, the father got a bracing and memorable lesson himself. The boy’s father recounted the story for me.

“‘Did you draw a Christmas tree?’ I asked my son, expecting to hear that he had, and that he had learned about the Christmas tree and the day we celebrate the birth of Jesus,” he said. “Instead my son looked up at me and said, ‘We have a friendship tree.’ I was stunned. I asked him, ‘What is a friendship tree?’ He just shrugged and said people should be friends.

“With a little more probing I realized no one at the school had taught him about a Christmas tree. They had renamed it. Now, as far as my son and thirty other kids were concerned, it was not the Christmas tree, it was the friendship tree. They had taken the Christmas tree away from my son, even though it wasn’t theirs to take.”

This father decided to see what was going on in the school, so the next day he made a point of taking his boy to class.

Upon entering the school the next morning, he saw hallway bulletin boards decorated with menorahs and big block letters spelling out HAPPY HANUKAH. Farther down the hall he found the red and black and green candles and letters announcing THE MIRACLE OF KWANZAA. At the end of a long hallway was a small pine tree on a table, which, despite its complete lack of decoration, most people would recognize as a Christmas tree.

The father asked the principal, “What is that tree down the hall?”

The principal beamed proudly, “This is our friendship tree.”

“Why don’t you call it what it is: a Christmas Tree?” the father asked.

“Oh, we’re trying to make sure we don’t offend people. It’s better to call it a ‘friendship tree,’” the principal replied.

Thinking back on the incident a few months later, the father took a grim satisfaction that he had changed the outlook of the principal of this expensive private school in the New York City suburbs. But not by argument or persuasion. “I told him if that tree wasn’t a Christmas tree tomorrow, I would be taking my son out of the school, and I would be making certain the other parents I know, who also pay tens of thousands of dollars to the school, would learn how their children were being taught incorrectly. We all know what a Christmas tree is, and I wanted my son to know what a Christmas tree is. I have no idea what a friendship tree is and I’m…certain that principal didn’t either.”

From the Preface of The War on Christmas, by John Gibson.