A story here: www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top News/2007/11/28/festival drops_christmas_from_title/4447/

Describes a Michigan town changing the name of their annual Dickens Christmas Festival to the "Dickens Holiday Festival" to placate anyone who might be offended by the word Christmas in the title. Hmmm... is this another casualty in the stupid "War on Christmas" that the bobbleheads on Fox News have bemoaned for several years now? Or is it atonement for high school freshmen having to read Barlelby the Scrivener? Either way, as I recall, Charles Dickens never wrote A Holiday Carol.

Will students in the area have to read a censored version of the Dickens classic? Will the character Bob Crachett be called something that doesn't sound so much like Crotch? Scrooge sounds an awful lot alike "Screw," and Buddha knows we can't have the kids reading such salty language.

As usual, South Park nailed this topic ten years ago, in the great "Mr. Hankey" episode:

www.tv.com/south-park/mr.-hankey-the-christmas-poo/episode/2425/summary.html?tag=ep_list;ep_title;11

A singing, dancing, talking magical turd is the star of the show, but the most clever line is when Mr. Garrison explains that the town is forced to remove all flashing lights, since they're offensive to people with epilepsy.

Anyway, what's your take? If you're an atheist, do you say "Merry Christmas" to people? If you're a Christian, are you particularly offended by this PC nonsense? And if you're Jewish, can you hook up a seriously doubting gentile who'll say Merry Anything-just-to-be-nice-and-stick-to-tradition-and-just-be-nice-to-people-because-that's-what-the -season's-all-about-anyway (me) with some homemade latkes? Those things are fiercely good.

Hanoe hobn!