'Victims'

Weird Al is said to have gone into hiding.

The latest salvo in the "war on Christmas" has been fired — this time over the lyrics to the venerable Christmas carol "Silent Night."

Many who believe Christmas has been overly secularized are pouncing on a Wisconsin school that will present the tune with different words, under the title "Cold in the Night."

'Mocking' a Traditional Song?

The controversy began when the father of a student at Ridgeway Elementary School in Dodgeville, Wis., was upset with the lyrics his child brought home to learn. He told the non-profit group Liberty Counsel they are: "Cold in the night, no one in sight, winter winds whirl and bite, how I wish I were happy and warm, safe with my family out of the storm."

Offended by the new words, he was unable to convince the school not to perform the song and contacted Liberty Counsel, which provides free legal assistance in religious freedom cases.

"We first try to educate a lot of people who are confused over the law," said Mathew Staver, president and general counsel of Liberty Counsel. "This kind of a situation is not so much confusion as it is an insensitivity and an attempt to secularize Christmas, because here they're actually taking a song and mocking it, in my opinion."

Dodgeville School District officials say traditional, unaltered carols will also be sung, and that "Cold in the Night" is part of a decades-old Christmas play that students have performed in years past, and is not an attack on the religious nature of the holiday.

Mocking a song? Bastards! Lock 'em up and throw the key in the ocean. While we're at it, we better round up all those little snot-nosed brats who work Batman into "Jingle Bells," just to be on the safe side.

At the risk of sounding Seinfeldian, who are these people? Christians are complaining about the secularization of Christmas and not boycotting every retailer in the country? I mean for turning the holiday into an orgy of spending, not for failing to display the word "Christmas" on sales floors.

It's amazing that the majority in this country can feel so persecuted. Poor Christians. Poor, marginalized white, male Christians. You're so much in the majority that the only discrimination you ever experience is so far from real discrimination it can only be described as "reverse discrimination." Ask a black woman in this country how she would like a little "reverse discrimination." She'd probably consider it a refreshing change of pace.

You want to know what it's like to have your holiday marginalized? Ask a Jew, or an African-American.

Why do you have to impose your beliefs on everyone else? Nobody is asking you not to celebrate the holiday season the way you want to. Why isn't that enough?