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This is the season of ironies, when shoppers emulate the Magi bringing gifts to the baby Jesus by elbowing each other out of the way on Black Friday.  When some of those overcome by the love of Christ are overcome by revenge fantasies if somebody wishes them “Happy holidays.”  When a few Tallahasseeans stew in resentment over the city’s Winter Festival. 

This is the season when Christians who perhaps should be contemplating the meaning of Advent instead strap on their armor and set out to do battle once again in the War on Christmas. 

Down at the Florida Capitol, we now have a Nativity scene in the rotunda.  The private Florida Nativity Scene Committee, which as far as I can tell never has been mentioned anywhere outside of news stories about the new Capitol crèche, erected the display, which includes a wooden frame, hay, Mary, Joseph and an angel, one small farm animal, and a robust white baby Jesus with a full head of wavy red hair. 

“We are not trying to offend anyone, but we are taking a stand for Christ in Christmas, a stand for truth and religious freedom,” organizer Pam Olsen told a Democrat reporter, “and what better place to do this than the heart of our state government.” 

Well, my feeling is that, if your religion relies on a reserved space in the heart of state government, nods in politicians’ speeches and folded hands before every government meeting, it might want to grow up and learn to stand on its own two feet. 

But some people are just itching for a fight. 

In Texas, there’s a new law to ensure that students can exchange traditional holiday greetings.  Texas Values, a conservative group, is taking time out from weighing in on the Boy Scouts and same-sex marriage to broadcast radio ads reminding people of their rights. 

“I’m sure that right-wing advocacy groups raise of a lot of money this time of year by hyping a fake war on Christmas,” Terri Burke, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, told the Forth Worth Star-Telegram. “ But the truth is that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution already protects schoolchildren’s religious freedom — whether they are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu or none of the above — and nothing that the Texas Legislature passes is going to improve on what the Founders gave us.” 

In Oklahoma, the legislature established its Biblical cred in 2009 by authorizing a Ten Commandments monument on the steps of the statehouse.  State Rep. Mike Ritze, R-Broken Arrow, led that initiative, but now worshipers of Satan are heaping praise on Ritze as they move to take advantage and erect their own monument — perhaps an interactive pentagram — nearby. 

“He’s helping a satanic agenda grow more than any of us possibly could,” said Lucien Greaves, a spokesman for the New York-based Satanic Temple. 

In Wisconsin, they’ve surrendered.  There’s a Christmas tree, circled by a toy train, in the Capitol rotunda.  As the old Ronco ads on TV used to say, “But wait, there’s more.”  Wisconsin residents also can find a menorah, a Festivus pole and a “Winter Solstice Nativity” with Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Mark Twain as the wise men and the Statue of Liberty and an astronaut as angels. 

Back here in Tallahassee, the Capitol rotunda is starting to get a little crowded, too. 

The Freedom From Religion Foundation set up a “Happy Winter Solstice” sign across from the Nativity scene, and this week the rotunda became one more place to celebrate Festivus, a “holiday” made popular on the “Seinfeld” show.  One of the icons of Festivus is a plain metal pole, which in Tallahassee has the added charm of being constructed of empty Pabst Blue Ribbon beer cans.  The atheists and Satanists are expected to add their entries, soon. 

Great.  A Nativity scene is now just one more booth on the carnival midway. 

According to a Rasmussen poll taken last year, six in 10 Americans celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, and about nine out of 10 celebrate Christmas in some way.  That’s a majority and a super-majority.  Yet, according to a separate survey by Public Policy Polling, 47 percent of us say there is a “War on Christmas.” 

I’m guessing that the creator of the universe doesn’t cringe when somebody says, “Happy holidays.”  The giver of grace isn’t banking on a porcelain baby set up just to the left of the metal detectors to get the word out. 

A simple Christian act — of forgiveness, of comfort, of courage, of love — would say so much more as we wait once again for the coming of Christ.