Unconditional surrender

So that was Christmas, 2010. Despite the "War on Christmas" stories filling the media, everybody I know gave and received Christmas cards. Nearly everybody I know sent or received Christmas presents of some sort, even in this time of austerity and looming unemployment for many. Barclays Bank estimated that the British public will have spent £48.8 billion in the run up to Christmas.

The Queen's Christmas message went out as normal, as did the Archbishop of Canterbury’s. The Pope delivered a Christmas Message in the Thought for the Day slot on Radio 4’s Today programme. Every remotely popular television programme had its own Christmas special. Kings College’s festival of nine lessons and carols was broadcast as usual. Up and down the nation, churchgoers were freely able attend carol services and go to midnight mass without being threatened or hindered in any way. Children scoffed chocolates from advent calendars and took part in nativity plays. Homes and workplaces were festooned with tinsel and the houses in some streets were decked with so many flashing snowmen and Santas that they outshone Heathrow's snowbound runways 

If there's been a War on Christmas in the UK, then the anti-Christmas forces have fought half-heartedly and lost decisively. Let's face it, it's over. It's time for the volunteers of the Politically Correct Brigades to accept the inevitable and surrender. Ever since the ignominious collapse of the Winterval campaign, when it emerged that their much-vaunted offensive never actually took place, it was clear that this war wouldn't be over by Christmas and that the anti-Christmas faction has been comprehensively defeated by the massed forces of the Baby Jesus. Christmas has won. Further conflict would only be a tragic waste.

I therefore beg the Politically Correct Brigades to bring this unwinnable, seemingly endless war of attrition to an end by offering their immediate, unconditional surrender to the Archbishop of Canterbury, or Santa Claus and his little elves.

When we've ended this madness, we can all move on. The nation can go on to celebrate the peace with joyful thanksgiving bonfires and we can all come together in the shared warmth from the burning effigies of Oliver Cromwell, Richard Dawkins and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. And newspaper commentators will finally have to find a real story to have an opinion about.