Last year I posted a response to the preposterous annual war on Christmas claims broadcast on Fox News and elsewhere, and decided to repost with a tweak or two. Happy Holidays -- FC

Christmas has at least as many meanings as there are people, whether they celebrate the holiday or believe in any of the story, or not. It affects us all.  There is hardly a more defining day in all of our culture, and it embraces the best and the worst of what we have become as a people.

In that regard, I'm glad that this year the Religious Right and the dour propagandists at Fox News did not engage as much as usual in their repulsive annual revival of an anti-Semitic tradition begun by Henry Ford: Falsely claiming that there is a War on Christmas.

Christian Right leaders continue to insist that the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, which took the lives of 26 people, including 20 six and seven-year-old children, happened because Americans have turned their backs on God.

The list of prominent Religious Right leaders spewing this unholy venom now includes Dr. James Dobson, the founder and former head of Focus on the Family, Bryan Fischer, a popular  American Family Association talk-show host, and Franklin Graham, the president and CEO of the tax-exempt Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

These men are bound and determined to look every which way for reasons for the massacre - abortion, same-sex marriage, video games - except at one  staring them in their faces; the uncontrolled and widespread accessibility of guns in this country.

I know it's not considered polite to speak ill of the dead, but I'm going to bend that rule today to comment on Robert H. Bork, the former federal appeals court judge and failed Supreme Court candidate who died yesterday.

Those of you who have been following church-state issues for a long time might recall that President Ronald W. Reagan nominated Bork to replace Justice Lewis Powell in the summer of 1987. Bork held extremely conservative - some might say reactionary - views, and the possibility of his elevation to the highest court in the land alarmed many groups.

Last Friday, in the small Connecticut town of Newtown, a disturbed young man who should never had access to an assault rifle murdered his mother, six educators, twenty children and then himself.  In a frighteningly brief period a nation was plunged into grief.

What is now needed is greater restrictions on assault weapons, perhaps with a buyback of those weapons that are still accessible to other would-be deranged gunmen. Of course this will trigger outcries of those who claim their Second Amendment Rights are being trampled upon. There is one force that can effectively answer this false charge if they choose to do so: Cardinal Dolan and the Catholic bishops. Will they use that power? So far, they have not.

It's commonplace for Religious Right leaders to blame the godlessness of Americans for hurricanes, tornadoes, the 911 attack, and the gay rights movement. And, as someone who regularly monitors and writes about the Religious Right's activities, I am seldom surprised by the events its leaders ascribe to godlessness. Nevertheless, even I was shocked by the comments of two nationally prominent conservative religious leaders in the wake of the Connecticut elementary school murders.

Two of the most shameful observations about the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, which killed 26 people, including 20 children, came from Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas Governor, Fox Television Channel news contributor, and host of a Saturday night Fox television program, and Joel Rosenberg, the best-selling author of apocalyptic novels.

The broken record that is Mat Staver, founder of the Religious Right group Liberty Counsel, is at it again: Christmas is under attack. Christmas is under attack. Christmas is under attack.

You could have fooled me. I stopped in a local mall last weekend, and it sure looked to me like Christmas was in full swing. On my way there, I passed more than one church with a Nativity scene on its lawn. Based on the decorations on my block alone, which include both the secular and the sacred, you'd have a hard time not knowing it's Christmastime.

As soon as I heard about Friday's horrific school shootings in Newtown, Conn., I knew it would only be a matter of time before some Religious Right extremist blamed it on the lack of mandatory prayer in public schools.

It didn't take long. First out of the crazy box was former Arkansas governor and erstwhile presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.

Adam Lanza carried out an act of apocalyptic violence in Connecticut, killing 28 people and wounding another victim. Most of those dead were children…most were just six years old.

We may never know Adam’s motivations. The troubled man's aunt told a reporter that Adam's mother Nancy was “something of a survivalist” and “she worried about economic collapse and had been stockpiling." Nancy Lanza had a collection of guns, including a Bushmaster rifle and at least two automatic pistols. We cannot ask his mother why her son became a murderer because apparently Nancy Lanza was Adams first victim.

Fears of an upcoming economic collapse or other doomsday scenarios are widespread given media attention to the absurd claim that an ancient Mayan calendar predicts the end of time at the end of December. Other speculative theories place the blame for the end of time on a variety of causes.

There are threads connecting survivalism, apocalyptic aggression, and violence, but they need sorting out. First of all, be aware that most people who practice survivalism and most people who have apocalyptic beliefs do not act out in violence.

Mitt Romney is a survivalist as are all devout members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Mormons are mandated by their religion to keep a cache of food, water, and other survival supplies. Given a history of violence against Mormons being pushed out of their homes by angry vigilantes, this is not merely a strange quirk.

Given the widespread media speculation about Adam Lanza’s psychological health, it needs to be said that most people who suffer from some form of mental illness do not act out in violence. Most of the media babble about Lanza’s mental illness is not supported by psychological research much less a real diagnosis.

If you're like me, your email inbox often contains items of a questionable nature. Despite spam filters, I still get the occasional message from a Nigerian government official offering me millions or notice that I've won a European lottery that I never entered.

But as far as I'm concerned, chain emails of a political nature are the worst: Here's proof President Barack Obama's birth certificate is a fake! Join this plan to bombard the ACLU with Christmas cards! Mitt Romney can still be president if one-third of the states refuse to cast ballots in the Electoral College!

The well-connected conservative culture warrior, Robert W. Finn, still leads the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri more than three months after being convicted of failing to report suspected child abuse.  This has led to a growing unease inside and outside of the Church that the problems that led to shocking child sex abuse scandals and high level coverups, are far from over.

When our friend Osagyefo Sekou became the editor of the Boston version of the monthly newspaper Spare Change News, he asked me to write something.  I wrote on the results of the marriage equality referenda in four states, and how some things have changed in the political and religious communities. (See below)

Spare Change News is one of a number of similar newspapers across the country intended to provide a dignified way for homeless people to earn income without panhandling, and keep issues of homelessness before the reading public. Vendors keep a share of the cover price.  The papers cover other subjects as well, making them a good read on the bus or the subway.

Many things drive me crazy about creationists but a major one is how they pretend to be great advocates of scientific inquiry and learning when in reality, those are the farthest things from their minds.

Consider Sen. Dennis Kruse of the Indiana legislature, who last year proposed a bill that would have mandated the teaching of "creation science" alongside evolution in public schools. Kruse's bill passed the state Senate but faltered in the House of Representatives after some lawmakers, in a rare bout with lucidity, pointed out that it was blatantly unconstitutional and would get the state sued back into the Stone Age. (That probably didn't bother creationists, since they don't believe there was a Stone Age.)