The following is a letter home from the annual war on Christmas.
Dear folks,
It’s been a while since I’ve written and I truly am sorry for that. Hope you weren’t too worried. As you probably read in the papers, my division has been busy. I hope you saw that my platoon played no small part in the decisive victory. Needless to say, us boys in the First Armored Atheist Division couldn’t be more proud. It was a tough fight for that candy cane factory; the Christians just didn’t want to give it up, but in the end we outfought them. We cheered when the engineers blew it up. We hadn’t cheered so loud since the phrase “Happy Holidays” was invented.
We cleaned out a Wal-Mart while we were there, too. Burned out the plastic decorations and every bit of tinsel they had. They’ve probably already re-supplied and are selling garish red-and-green tchotchkes again. You know how it goes — we hit them, they hit us, and then we do it all again. But we won’t let up. Heck no.
It’s strange that it’s just November. This season just seems to drag on anymore. Every year the war starts earlier and goes on longer. Remember when Christmas season began mid-November and was over on January 1? It seems so long ago.
The first few years they started their Christmas operations in September, it was touch-and-go. The year we mounted a counteroffensive just after Labor Day sure took them by surprise, though. We shut down the manufacture of stockings along a 400-mile front and had them on their heels. But I’m rambling now.
I hope to be home by the end of January. The company intel officer says he thinks Christmas operations, including post-holiday sales, will run through mid-January. I’m sure we’ll be fighting till the end of it. Of course, the usual discharge processing will take another week or so, but I hope to be home for the playoffs. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
On a more somber note, I don’t know if the news made it back yet, but Josh Ericson was killed in action last week. I don’t know if his folks know yet, and I’m sure his girl Rose is going to take it hard.
We were flanking enemy infantry entrenched in a Christmas tree grove. We’d just moved around their side when we got hit by fire from an elven anti-tank unit. We had to fight a running battle all the way back to our lines. Josh got hit when they first opened up but we got him back to the docs. There wasn’t much they could do. Those frag ornaments really do a number on a guy. Josh always was good people and it was tough to lose him. Everyone in the Third Platoon loved him.
It really makes a guy think to see a fella like Josh go out like that. It makes me wonder about the real cost of this war and if it’s all worth it. So many fine young men lost, but are we nearer to winning the war on Christmas?
But then from somewhere deep in your mind comes the echoing melody of Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer and your heart knows one thing: I must fight till the fight is over to end this holiday. I must keep pushing on until the last vestiges of Christmas are gone. We owe it to ourselves, and even more to our kids and their kids, too.
I’m going to end this now. We’re moving off the front tomorrow and into reserves. We’re going to be backing up the Second Agnostic Brigade in their offensive against a strategic garland reserve. Hopefully those boys in the Second make easy work of it and we sit in reserve for a while. I wouldn’t mind putting my feet up and taking some time off. A hot shower and a hot breakfast sound nice. Eggs over easy, please. To think they waste eggs making that awful eggnog.
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Give my regards to everyone and tell them I’ll be seeing them soon. I plan to do just as Grandpa said and keep my head down and my ass lower, haha! Kidding aside, I’ll be as safe as I can be and do my best to make you proud. Everyone is making tough sacrifices, but I don’t want to make that big a sacrifice.
Just kidding.
We’re in this war to win it and, as you know, every atheist is absolutely committed to eradicating Christmas from the earth. It isn’t hyperbole when they say it’s a war on Christmas. People may have thought it was exaggeration by conservative talking heads to shill their books, but not in the least!
