O'Reilly, who in a pique of anger on Dec. 9 called Media Matters' transcribers "the worst non-criminal element in the country," seems to wear the accusations of anti-Semitism as a badge of honor -- proof that he's upsetting the media elite and standing up for traditional American values. "If you think that's anti-Semitic, I wanna know. Do you think that's anti-Semitic?" O'Reilly asked listeners after replaying a tape of his Dec. 3 caller.

Early this year, O'Reilly's blanket defense of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" against charges that its portrayal of Jews was anti-Semitic initially raised some suspicions among some Jews. When O'Reilly asked one guest on his Fox News show if the "Passion" controversy was being driven by the fact that "the major media in Hollywood and a lot of the secular press is controlled by Jewish people," many considered their suspicions confirmed.

O'Reilly has insisted he's a friend to Jews. During a March 10 appearance on the Don Imus radio show, responding to New York Times columnist Frank Rich, who ridiculed O'Reilly's question about Jews controlling the secular press, O'Reilly said, "I did a benefit in L.A. four weeks ago where we raised millions of dollars for Israel. OK, pal? Get off it." Following O'Reilly's lead, Business Week reported that the host had "chaired a benefit for Israel that raised $40 million."

But as noted by the Forward, the New York Jewish weekly, O'Reilly was simply the paid speaker for the fundraising event, not a volunteer chair who helped raise money. (His going rate is $60,000 per speech.) The event, sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, raised $3 million, not $40 million, and most of that $3 million was spent on local causes, not given to support Israel.

Aside from baiting Jews, who continued to vote overwhelmingly Democratic in November, despite elaborate efforts by Republicans to sway their votes this year, the larger target in the Christmas crusade is the progressive movement and the Democratic Party. "There's no question that some sections of the political right think it's time to finish off liberal and progressive forces forever," says Lerner. "And they're not restrained by any sense of fairness. They're sore winners. They won and now they want to beat up on the people they've already defeated. "

Who are the defeated? O'Reilly laid out his conspiracy theory for Fox News guest Newt Gingrich on Dec. 10: "It's like the MoveOn people [saying], 'We're never going to get gay marriage, euthanasia, partial birth if we have a Christian nation. We've got to get rid of that Christian nation designation like Canada has, and then we can get our agenda through.' And what's the biggest display of Christian? It's Christmas."

"These guys are nuts, simply nuts," answers Ira Foreman, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council. "Either they're woefully ignorant or it's the worst kind of demagoguery. If Jews or progressives or Democrats are supposed to be behind this plot to ruin Christmas, somehow they left me out."

Nonetheless, the crusaders seem to have no shortage of dire anecdotes about the absurd lengths that secularists will go to destroy Christmas in America.

For instance, conservative pundits blame Target for no longer allowing the Salvation Army to collect money outside its stores. But the retail chain made the move simply because it was getting requests to solicit donations in front of stores from so many nonprofit groups -- presumably several faith-based ones -- that executives didn't feel that it was right to make a lone exception for the Salvation Army.

Right-wingers chastise organizers of Denver's downtown holiday Parade of Lights for rejecting the nearby Faith Bible Church's religious float. But organizers of the event, fearful of being put in the position of having to choose one faith's float over another for its small parade, have never allowed religious floats of any kind in the procession. So how does that fit into a specifically anti-Christian "jihad" gripping America? (P.S. The Faith Bible Church was notified more than six months ago that its float would not be in the parade, so the incident hardly qualifies as news.)

And take the example of a school principal in Kirkland, Wash., who allegedly canceled a performance of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" out of fear that it violated the district's holiday policy of keeping church and state separate. The story has become a touchstone in the anti-Christmas crusade movement. O'Reilly cited the play's being "banned" as a prime example of "anti-Christmas madness," while conservative Washington Times columnist Deborah Simmons wrote matter-of-factly that the principal "lowered the curtain on a production of the classic 'A Christmas Carol' because feeble Tiny Tim says, 'God bless us everyone.'" That assertion is pure fiction.

Reading the very first news account of the manufactured controversy, from a Dec. 5 article in the King County Journal, it's plain the school's principal, Mark Robertson, "canceled the Dec. 17 matinee by the Attic Theatre cast because students would have been charged to see the performance." Robertson himself told the paper: "We don't allow any private organizations to come and sell products in the schools, or we'd have everybody down here." The principal mentioned in passing that even if the play were free it would have prompted "a secondary discussion about public school and religion," such as whether the play was tied to any particular curriculum and whether attendance was mandatory.

Yet on Dec. 8, Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat, reaching a much wider audience than the King County Journal, wrote that Kirkland "students were to see a staging of Dickens' story on Dec. 17, but the principal has canceled it, in part because it raised the issue of religion in the public schools."

Two days later, Westneat conceded he "went too far" in his original column, admitting the play was canceled because it was improperly booked. "The principal's comments about the play raising issues of religion in school were misunderstood," he wrote. By then, however, the tale of the canceled Christmas play had ricocheted around the talk radio echo chamber and become permanently lodged inside Fox News.

In an interesting footnote, Westneat wrote, "Few things I've written have generated as loud and disparate a response as Wednesday's column. I'm surprised at how many rallied to the secular cause. Nearly half of more than 200 readers who weighed in said schools should avoid the [Christmas] issue." Which hardly supports O'Reilly's claim that fed-up Americans are rising up against anti-Christmas forces.

That said, Lerner suggests liberals would be making a serious mistake if they failed to acknowledge the real sense that the spiritual side of Christmas is being undermined in American culture. He says Jews, progressives and secularists aren't the real Grinches, but rather the material-obsessed marketplace. "It's turning the symbolic values of Christmas into an excuse to convince people to buy and buy and buy," he says. "Christians are right to feel spiritual values are under assault; they are responding to a very real problem. But secularists are not to blame."

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