You can be sure there is a War on Christmas when young lovers frolicking in the snow refrain from naming their snowmen 'Parson Brown.'
Alas, almost all snowmen built these days are exclusively secular. Any couple wishing to be married by an anthropomorphic snow creation today would invent a 'Justice of the Peace Brown,' no doubt wearing a Harry Potter baseball cap and a gender neutral scarf.
Parson Brown has become a figure from an ancient, musty and best-forgotten past; as foreign as an Eleusinian Hierophant; as alien as Almondine, the triple-breasted Nougat priestess from the Planet Marzipan (from where it takes at least eight million light years to get a marriage license approved anyway).
The only vaguely Christian snowman I'm aware of this year is Father Melti, outside St Igbert's Chapel of the Defrosted Martyr, and his head has already collapsed and unpleasant yellow spots have appeared around his cratered torso.
Yes, the Winter Wonderland of our modern age is a well-populated pagan landscape of carrot-nosed, atheist snow-persons.
So never send to know for whom the sleigh bell rings; it rings for thee, Baby Jesus.
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