If you wanted to do a parody of right-wing media, you would invent a “War on Christmas” and cover it more than the actual war in Afghanistan.

Of course, you don’t have to do this because the host of Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly, has been doing it for years. As a veteran of more than a half-dozen Wars on Christmas, O’Reilly’s battle-hardened, shellshocked willingness to attack ANYONE who dares call a Christmas tree a “holiday tree” never wavers.

This year O’Reilly added a new element to the war, a firm conviction that Christianity is not a religion, it’s a philosophy — a contention disputed by one of his fellow veterans, a Catholic priest. The point of this assertion is to make Christmas as secular as Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday because then, one would assume, calling a Christmas tree a “holiday tree” could finally be declared a crime and O’Reilly can move on to defending other sacred American institutions.

He could, for example, defend the right to drink beer while watching football or insist all bunnies be called “Easter bunnies” — at least during spring.