It's too soon to have to think about any of this, but it's happening anyways - a federal judge in LA's District Court ruled today that the city of Santa Monica is allowed to ban Nativity scenes in parks and other public places after The Santa Monica Nativity Scene Committee brought a lawsuit against the city. If the decision carries, all "unattended displays," regardless of content, will be prohibited from city-owned spaces. The committee, which has been staging the scenes for almost sixty years, has promised to appeal the decision, because this is a fight that will continue forever, long after every living human descendant has forgotten what a nativity is.

This, of course, is only the beginning in what is sure to be a series of brutal escalations in the Christmas Wars. Both sides will issue desperate, violent salvos in an effort to maintain their eternal brinkmanship. Everyone will protest everyone else's courtrooms and churches. It won't be long before we start to see nativity scenes that are able to offer active resistance against any attempts at removal.

Imagine a baby Jesus who can burst from his manger and scuttle up walls on a thousand shuddering tentacles. A Mary whose gaze and grip grow steadily stronger and more vicelike until the poor devil trying to stir her from her place find the world going black and silent around him. Adoring angels will become avenging angels. The three wise men will fling withering fistfuls of acid from their jars of myrrh. Parks everywhere will be filled with the dying and the dead from November to January, year after bloody year.