Donald Trump’s son and daughter-in-law claimed victory in the ostensible battle for the soul of the holiday season, dealing a crushing blow to the grinches Fox News believes are vowing to stop “Christmas.”

“It is nice to say ‘Merry Christmas’ again,” Eric Trump told Fox host Jeanine Pirro.

The phrase “War on Christmas” sprang into the mainstream in 2005, when then-Fox host Bill O’Reilly interviewed John Gibson, a former Fox host, about Gibson’s book of the same name. (According to a 2016 New York Times story, a Fairleigh Dickinson University study found that watching Fox News “increased the likelihood that someone would believe in the War on Christmas by 5 to 10%.”)

In 2016, after he won election, Donald Trump noted that the country could say Merry Christmas “again” after eight years of Barack Obama in the White House.

Perhaps Trump was referring to the hit 1963 tune “Happy Holiday” by Andy Williams instead, because a 2017 YouTube video titled “Obama saying ‘Merry Christmas’” compiles more than a dozen clips of Obama saying the phrase.

If some still insist on waging the war despite the Trump family’s proclamations of victory, one of its biggest battlefields is in church. According to a 2017 study by the Pew Research Center, just 51% of Americans plan to attend religious services on Christmas.

It’s hard to say whether Eric and Lara really believe there was a time in the near past where folks were attempting to outlaw Christmas trees or eating ice cream with your kids, or otherwise institute penalties for exhibiting Christmas Cheer.

The holiday, as anyone with a grip on reality is aware, is alive and well. The default assumption should probably involve a healthy dose of cynicism at this point. For her part, the Fox News host they’re speaking with, Jeanine Pirro, was suspended earlier this year for suggesting without evidence that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a practicing Muslim, held allegiance to Sharia Law over the Constitution. It’s clear Pirro has no idea what Sharia actually is, but the subtext was also clear: Islam is incompatible with American values, and Muslims cannot be Real Americans. Do we think this viewpoint is connected to the Christmas meltdowns?

Regardless, these folks have learned intimately the power of resentment and paranoia. They have mastered the art of channeling that fear and rage about the changing world into streamlined ideology and political allegiance. It’s way easier than offering people policy solutions that will materially improve their lives.

It doesn’t matter that Christmas is, like, the first holiday anyone thinks of when they hear, “happy holidays.” The phrase is an attack on Christmas, because it does not solely honor Christmas. The offense this caused runs so deep that even in declaring victory, the Christmas Defenders must linger on the outrage of having had to wage the war at all. The nerve of those people.

With that, Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates the holiday who reads this little website. And Happy Holidays to everyone else that doesn’t.

WATCH:

Jeanine Pirro: "[Trump family has] done wonderful things for this country. We now don't have the political correctness we used to. People are actually saying 'Merry Christmas'" pic.twitter.com/7cyZ4f2idx

— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) December 15, 2019