"Merry Christmas, terrorist sympathizer!"

Ah, the joys of the season! When various groups celebrate Chanukah, Solstice, Eid ul-Adha, Kwanzaa, Christmas, or other holidays, you'd think it would be a more festive, peaceful time.

You'd think that. But you would be wrong. Perhaps I should start at the beginning.

My fiancee and I are moving soon from our comfortable home here in Madison, Wisconsin, so we decided to have some close friends over tomorrow, before we really start packing everything to ship to Boston. Of course, we needed a few things for the gathering, so I was sent on a little shopping trip. I suppose it was inevitable, then, that I would come across one of the Salvation Army pots with accompanying bell ringer, asking for a donation.

Now, to be clear, I have nothing against the Salvation Army. They do a lot of good work and I have a great deal of respect for them. But there are two reasons why I am unlikely to donate anything to them. First, I'm Jewish, and if I'm going to donate anything to a religious organization, I'm more likely to donate to a Jewish group. And second, and really more relevant for this story, I never carry a lot of money with me.

In fact, today, I was carrying no money. No cash, no spare change, nothing. These days, I wouldn't expect that to be so uncommon -- I had a credit card with me, and that's really all I needed to make my necessary purchases, just as millions of other people do every day. So I made my purchases, went to leave the store, and was confronted by the bell ringer.

"Merry Christmas," he said, gesturing toward the pot.

"Happy holidays," I replied, thinking nothing of it. No big deal, right?

Think again.

"Oh, you're one of those people," the man sneered at me.

I probably should have kept on walking. I probably should have just let it go. I probably should have just wished the man a pleasant evening, despite his rudeness, and left. But I didn't do that.

"One of what people?" I asked, trying to keep my rising anger out of my tone of voice.

"You know who I'm talking about. Look around you, pal. You live in a Christian country and we celebrate Christmas here! If you don't like it, you can get the hell out."

I know better than to argue with such people. I know better than to point out that when Thomas Jefferson was writing the Declaration of Independence, he wrote that all men (or by today's superior standards, all people) are created equal, not just the Christians. I know better than to point out that the Constitution explicitly protects the equality of non-Christians such as myself. I know better than to explain that the Treaty of Tripoli, entered into by the United States of America in 1796, explicitly states that "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." I know better than to quote George Washington, who famously wrote in 1790 to my co-religionists of Newport, Rhode Island, that the United States "gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens," regardless of faith (or lack thereof).

But I also know that bigotry unchallenged is bigotry condoned and allowed to spread. And so I turned to the man to confront him.

But I hardly got the first word out of my mouth when he interrupted me.

"It's because of people like you that we can't give the soldiers what they need to kill all the terrorists in Iraq! It's gonna be your fault when they get us again!"

I started to tell the man how inappropriate his screed was. I wanted to tell him that I've experienced more terrorism in my relatively short life than most people ever will. I wanted to tell him that had it not been for a colleague's toothache, I would have been in the World Trade Center on 9/11. I wanted to tell him about the experience of pulling the broken, battered, bloodied body of a dear friend of mine from a public bus in Jerusalem mere moments after a terrorist blew himself up on it.

But I don't need to justify myself to a dittohead.

Instead I started talking about how the vast majority of the people in Iraq are just trying to go about their daily business, how they're not so different from us, how they just want to live in peace. I know, I know -- what's the point?

"It figures you would say that. You're just like them! You're a terrorist sympathizer! I should call the cops on you right now. I hope they torture everything you know out of you, Mohammed."

Yes, it's true. He called me "Mohammed" as an insult. Because, of course, all people named Mohammed are terrorists, right? No one named, say, "Ted" or "Tim" or "Eric" could possibly be a terrorist, right? Seriously, does reading Ann Coulter's collected works make one dumber, or is the idiocy a prerequisite for even picking up one of her books?

At this point, my intellect caught up with my emotions. I took my purchases to my car, put them in the trunk, and returned the store, glaring at the bellringer as I past him and he muttered obscenities at me under his breath. I went straight to the customer service desk and asked to speak with a manager, to whom I promptly gave my account of the incident.

The manager, to his credit, apologized profusely and acknowledged that no one should be subjected to such abuse. But it's also not entirely the store's fault -- after all, they don't provide the bell ringers; that's the Salvation Army's job. He could ask the bellringer to leave, but there wasn't much more he could do.

As I left the store a second time, I had to walk past the disgraceful bell ringer again.

"Some day, we're going to get rid of all you Christian haters! Merry Christmas, terrorist sympathizer!"

So why do I tell you this story?

Well, for starters, note that this happened in Madison, Wisconsin, a bastion of liberalism. If it happened to me here, it can happen to anyone anywhere!

Additionally, some of you may recall some of the horror stories I have about growing up Jewish in my hometown, a horrible place I hope I'll never see again. You might recall I've been stabbed three times, shot at twice, and otherwise assaulted dozens of times by people who think of this country as "a Christian nation" and who despise the notion of anyone not like them setting foot on such hallowed ground. You might be aware that each of my grandparents were survivors of the Holocaust, three of them the sole survivors from their own very large families -- and you might know that kind of rhetoric engaged in by these "Christian nation" types sometimes comes dangerously close to the kind of rhetoric used by the Nazis.

You want to know why we fight the so-called "War on Christmas"? This is why. It's not that any of us have a problem with Christmas or Christians per se; it's not that we are trying to persecute anybody; it's not that we're upset over the dominance of Christians in the US, which is a matter of basic demographics; it's not even that we're spoiling for a fight, for sobbing out loud! We fight the so-called "War on Christmas" because the Falafel Boy disciples who whine about it are attacking us first.

It's a matter of self-defense.

To all those who would celebrate their holiday as they see fit, whatever holiday it may be, we wish you nothing but the best. To all those who would seek to demolish our constitutional freedoms even further, prepare to get your butts kicked. We didn't start this fight, but given that we have no choice but to fight it, we're going to bring the fight to you.