Despite the fact that December 25th now lies behind us, the War On Christmas continues, with the bloodiest fighting occurring in Orthodox Christmas, also known as Occupied Early January. While many involved in the conflict concern themselves primarily with Christmas’s aggressive expansion toward Thanksgiving, gobbling up virtually the entirety of December amid aggressive displays of carols and advent calendars, it is Christmas’s disputed annexation of Early January that now draws the world’s gaze.
“Christmas’s claims on Early January are specious at best,” says renowned Stanford conflict historian Scott Sagan,“…as it relies primarily on the testimony of some ancient calendars from the Roman era that have been discredited even by Christians since 1582.” Nevertheless, the united churches of Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria Armenia, Greece, and North Africa hold that these calendars prove that Early January is their rightful territory de jure. Those seeking to dispute this claim often invoke the New Years Accord, which stipulates that Christmas must occur before the New Year and that putting it anywhere else is a gross violation of religious law, setting a precedent that could potentially allow Christmas to lay claim on the entirety of the calendar year.
Even as the conflict focuses on Occupied Early January, some hardliners in the anti-Christmas camp are unwilling to let any incursion of Christmas into the winter months go unchallenged. Soldiers retrenching themselves against the oncoming Christmas onslaught rallied to cries of “All historical records indicate that Jesus, if he was ever born, was born in April, not December! All incursions of Christmas upon the winter months are an outright colonization of our calendar! Drown out their jingles with the sound of one thousand guns!”
