First official skirmish in this year’s War on Xmas!

There are so few things you can truly count on in life: death, taxes, cellulite, scrotal sag, termites, obnoxious in-laws, dreckky Super Bowl Half-Time shows, and the unrelenting carping about the loss of “American” holidays like the virgin birth in the Middle East of the amazingly Aryan-looking male Semite named Jesus.

Yes, it’s the first installment in this year’s War on Xmas, courtesy of the Chicago-area Daily Southtown.

Says CNN‘s rabid chipmunk Glenn Beck: "For years now, it seems like the war on Christmas is only getting worse. First it was mangers, then it was trees. And then it was the word itself."

Blogger Dan Riehl wails that it‘s yet another liberal attack on tradition. "You can kiss traditional American customs goodbye, supplanted by the new multiculturalism that gets more multi- and less American every day.”

The homonym-challenged and anatomy-obsessed Steve from Norfolk left this gem on topix.com: "This is the enemy you are talking about….Are you going to keep kissing they're [sic] asses until they roll you over and cut your throat? Get a spine!"

Pussy JoeSnuffy bewails his fate at LibertyPost.org, sobbing: "We invite them over here and give them sanctuary and they repay us by trying to destroy our culture and take over our lands…. It is an invasion of a hostile people who have no interest in assimilating but in conquering and dominating.”

And now for some input from the academics. Michael Niederman, the chair of television department at Columbia College Chicago, points out the bleeding obvious about why so many media personalities use such bogus issues as a battle cry.

"It's a call and response," he said. "They'll find one that gets a response, and they'll ride it until it's dead."

And death never comes soon enough.

"To a point, these topics are even made up or manufactured,"[Niederman] said, pointing to Bill O'Reilly's series of commentaries dubbed "Christmas Under Siege" as an example.

"It's pandering to your audience."

Are you shocked?