The brave few fighting to rescue Christmas from the Jesus-hating liberals suddenly found themselves fighting on a new front this week, as they launched an e-mail blitzkrieg against insufficiently Christian churches that decided holding services on Christmas Sunday was just, you know, too much of a hassle. Apparently, Christianity will topple if Wal-Mart greeters don't bow down before Christmas, but dammit, little Esau is gonna want to play with his new Game Boy that morning and it'll be easier to just skip the whole worship thing.

One such church is the enormous Southland Christian Church in Lexington, Kentucky (motto: "more parking than Six Flags"). After news broke that it was joining several other "megachurches" in declining to hold services on December 25th, Jon Weece, the senior minister, was deluged with nastygrams from irate soldiers in the Christmas War, who surely never dreamed that they would be attacking churches in their defense of, well, the church.

It was a defiant Weece that took the podium last night in the vast Southland worship hall on a stage bedecked with no less than 15 artificial Christmas trees, a pagan symbol. First, Weece blamed Satan for the criticism: "Can you see or begin to see that the devil is stirring the pot on this?"

After calling his critics tools of the devil, he then complained his critics were calling him a tool of the devil: "People e-mail me, calling me pathetic, a disgrace to the church and the kingdom, a child of Satan."

Shockingly, Weece then proceeded to attack Christmas himself, using the same arguments that were so offensive they got a Wal-Mart employee fired when expressed in an e-mail: "Christmas began as a pagan holiday to the Roman gods, and if we were to really celebrate the historical birth of Jesus, it would either be in early January or mid-April. I'm only pointing out the historical technicalities not out of intellectual arrogance, but again because of the illogical, ill-informed and even hypocritical arguments that were aimed at me this past week."

As a grand finale, he then claimed not worshipping on Sunday is OK because that's how the Jews do it:

Weece also argued that the church would be worshiping every Sunday in December -- at least technically.

Referring to Christianity's Jewish roots, he said that Sunday begins at sundown on Saturday according to biblical tradition.

So the word from one of the biggest churches in the country: it's OK not to observe Chrismas because it's pagan, and besides, worshipping on Sunday isn't really that important anyway.

Reportedly, little Esau doesn't give a damn as long as he gets his Game Boy.