(AlterNet) -- Every holiday season, the right-wing outrage machine fires up the masses by feeding them misleading, anecdotal stories about a "war on Christmas." The typical war on Christmas story follows a simple pattern: a small town or an obscure group of people make a tiny, harmless gesture toward secularism; local media gets a hold of it; and an echo chamber of outrage, from The Blaze to AM radio to Fox News escalates the situation to a fever pitch, making villains of the secular scrooges and heroes of the persecuted Christians.
On the left it’s become something of a punchline, but on the right it’s as politically potent as ever. Here is a countdown of the year’s dumbest examples.
8. Small town adds “Christmas” to tree-lighting ceremony, rightwing media piles on.
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The typical War on Christmas (non) story follows a very simple pattern: a Small town or otherwise obscure group of people make a tiny, harmless gesture towards secularism (this is sometimes brought on by a lawsuit), local media gets a hold of it (the more clickbait-y the better) and an echo chamber of outrage, from The Blaze to AM radio to Fox News quickly escalates the situation to a fever pitch, making villains of the secular scrooges and heroes of the persecuted Christians.
