Tinsel-Wrapped Fragility
The Annual Meltdown Over "The War On Christmas"
If you listen closely right around the time the Thanksgiving leftovers finally turn toxic, you can hear it begin. It’s a low, collective whine rising from the exurbs and the darker, stickier corners of the internet. It is the mating call of the aggrieved American chud, bracing themselves for the most harrowing ordeal of their calendar year:
Someone, somewhere, might wish them “Happy Holidays.”
Every year, like clockwork, we have to do this dumbass dance. We have to pretend that there is a coordinated, sinister “War on Christmas” funded by Soros and executed by purple-haired baristas who secretly want to replace Baby Jesus with a generic winter solstice shrub.
I stumbled across the image above—a Facebook post from the absolute legend Father Nathan Monk sharing a screenshot from the bird app, and it stopped my doom-scrolling cold. It is the perfect encapsulation of the modern culture war brain rot: one person furiously inventing their own oppression, and Father Monk simply refusing to feed the trolls.
Let’s be intellectually honest for one goddamned second about the mechanics of this grievance.
The original poster, “dbtrickrider” (who is almost certainly wearing that cowboy hat indoors), threatens to scream if she hears “holiday party” again. She demands it be called a “freaking CHRISTMAS PARTY.”
Here is the thing that seems to escape these folks every single December: Christmas is objectively a holiday.
Therefore, when a corporation, a cashier, or a neighbor wishes you “Happy Holidays,” they are literally talking to you, the Christmas reveler. You are included in the set. You are in the club.
But being “included” isn’t what they want. They don’t want equality; they want the whole damn pie. If you aren’t specifically bending the knee to their particular brand of winter celebration, you are attacking them. It is a level of narcissistic fragility that would be hilarious if these people didn’t also vote in school board elections.
Let’s zoom out a bit. Spoiler alert: There are other nationally recognized holidays in December.
There is Hanukkah, for instance. And this is where the logic of the American Right truly eats itself. We watch the Christo-Fascist crowd absolutely fetishize the state of Israel all year long—usually for bizarre, evangelical, end-times cosplay reasons. They love Israel as a geopolitical prop.
Yet, the moment you use a greeting inclusive enough to acknowledge that Jewish people exist in their own zip code? They lose their absolute minds. They want the geopolitical ally, but they don’t want the neighbor with the menorah. That’s not faith; that’s just territorial dominance living rent-free in their heads.
For the rest of us—the exhausted majority just trying to get to January 2nd without going broke or having a nervous breakdown—
” Happy Holidays” isn’t a Marxist plot. It’s just efficient.
December is a chaotic dumpster fire of multicultural obligations. “Happy Holidays” is a linguistic catch-all. It’s polite. It’s easy.
Nobody is oppressing you. There are no secular hit squads kicking down doors to confiscate nativity scenes. You can say “Merry Christmas” with all the Caucasity you can muster, and I promise you, literally no one cares. Go nuts. Deck the halls.
The problem isn’t that they can’t say Merry Christmas; the problem is that they are seething that anyone else can say anything different.
It all boils down to Main Character Syndrome. For generations, a certain demographic in this country has been the undisputed center of the cultural universe. When you are accustomed to absolute privilege, inclusion feels like oppression. When you are used to being the only voice in the room, someone else whispering “Happy Hanukkah” sounds like a shout.
So, how do we survive another season of this manufactured outrage?
We take a page from the playbook of the GOAT in that screenshot, Father Nathan Monk. When faced with the sputtering rage of someone demanding you validate their specific worldview, you don’t argue. You don’t explain the history of Saturnalia. You don’t try to reason with someone who has clearly touched zero grass this year.
You just look them dead in the digital eye and say:
”Holiday Party.”
Stay frosty out there, nomads. And Happy whatever-the-hell doesn’t get you screamed at in a Walmart parking lot.