Everyone gather around the non-denominational holiday furniture item of your choice so that we can discuss something. America, I’m not sure you realize this, but you take the holidays too seriously. You’re raving lunatics around the holidays, alternating between hugging everything in sight and sobbingly throwing shoes at people. The holidays in America are about as picturesque as a kitten in a microwave. You all should be on some kind of green and red holiday edition Valium.

In this bipolar bonanza of a holiday season, there are two sides that tear apart the American psyche like a taffy pull of pain. In one corner, we have people who give the politically correct a bad name. They have the ACLU on speed dial. These are people who get offended by nativity displays on private lawns. They are offended — and this actually happened in Chicago — that a Christmas festival is sponsored by a Christmas movie. Jimmy Stewart, you have my permission to jump.

In the other corner we have the culture warriors who view saying “Happy Holidays” as a direct attack on our institutional values. Suggesting there are other holidays in this season is like making baby Jesus cry or rooting against the Cowboys. These people think that there is a war going on where secularists are trying to effectively put an end to Christmas. In some secluded bunker in San Francisco, atheists come together and plot ways to destroy Christmas. Frank Zappa presides over the panel while Andy Rooney, Marilyn Manson and Ani DiFranco each take turns discussing how to take Christ out of Christmas and convert churches into sex shops and Whole Food stores. In addition to making retail stores say “Happy Holidays,” this panel of evil is going to personally visit nativity scenes and make it look like one of the wise men is humping Joseph. They are going to use their Hollywood influence to deny funding to holiday gems like “The Nativity Story” and replace them with films by Tim Allen. Tim Allen! Is nothing sacred?

But Bill O’Reilly wants to save Christmas from the consumerist secularists. He is calling for boycotts of stores that say “Happy Holidays” and huffing and puffing and hoping that he’ll blow someone’s house down before all that hot air inside him explodes and you get icky Bill O’Reilly guts all over that nice clean Fox News set. So please, kids, buy his book “How Bill O’Reilly Saved Christmas” from his Web site or else Jesus won’t come down your chimney and give you that My Little Pony you wanted.

The culture warriors want you to remember the reason for the season, which to them is to celebrate the birth of the Messiah. Of course, they ignore how Christianity overlaid its holiday on a pre-existing pre-Christian tradition that is similar in many different parts of the world. This “winter solstice” may well be the “true reason for the season.” I’d love to see people try to take back winter for the solstice and instead of caroling, going door to door and singing songs about converting people to paganism. Maybe change the words of some Christmas carols: “Joy to the Druids” and “The Sun God is Coming to Town.” Light the holiday straw goat on fire and you’ve got yourself an effective way to offend pretty much everyone. My point is: Culture warriors like to overlook the fact that other people have holidays around this time and that maybe, just maybe, businesses are hedging their bets by saying “Happy Holidays.”

America, there is a reason that suicide rates rise around the holidays. I’m worried about you. Put down the shiv-shaped candy cane and listen. Look, after I hear “I’ll be home for Christmas” or some equally cheery song I feel like pouring eggnog on my body, running to the chimney and igniting myself in a joyous human yule-log. We all get those urges! But don’t kill yourself because a retail store doesn’t greet you in the way you want. At this point, you’re lucky to be greeted at all. The anger and discontent in this country has spilt over into a season that is supposed to promote good will toward man (but sadly not between a man and man). Instead it’s become just another culture clash of values. Instead of bringing people together in our shared loved of materialistic emotional investment, the season becomes an arms race of toys, vitriolic fighting over video game systems, subpoenas as stocking stuffers and idiots calling for religious dogmatism as a universal solution for a personal holiday. I wonder if the pagans had these kinds of problems back in the day.

Chris’s editor wants him to wish you all a happy holiday. Send complaints to cholt@stanford.edu.