There is a War on Christmas in my place of work each December, and the open plan design of our offices is ideal for fighting this war on many fronts at once.
We are a mixed bag of believers, non-believers, don't knows, don't cares, two Jews, a Muslim, and a Wiccan Priestess who is on a part time contract, so the battles rage unabated all through Advent.
When to put the decorations up, what decoration are permitted, where the decorations are allowed to be, and when the decorations should be taken down: all fodder for the blazing cannons.
The last week before New Year's, however, is a sort of Treaty of Versailles: an unsatisfactory and merely temporary peace, ultimately resulting in nothing but rapid inflation of pique and a powder keg of resentment.
Hostilities resume when the combatants return to work in the first week of January and Frank the militant atheist from Sales occupies the water cooler with his booming blitzkrieg voice. "We shall fight in the cubicles," says Joan, the born-again Christian from HR. "We shall fight n the loading zones. We shall fight in the hallway and the lobby. We shall never surrender."
Which probably means she's going to hang that horrendous "musical" Holy Family mobile in the canteen again next year, despite the fact that Frank continually tries to destroy it with his squadron of flicked elastic bands.
Personally, I am tired of being deafened by the conflict and wish to declare my ears a No Fly Zone next year.
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