Army veteran Ralphie Parker clutched his War on Christmas Expeditionary Medal as he watched the last flight of soldiers leaving the Mall of America on CNN.
“So this is how it ends,” said Parker, who lost an eye in 2009 while deployed with the 82nd Airborne Division to the inflatable lawn Santa aisle of a Farm & Fleet in Boise. “Not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with ‘Little Drummer Boy.’ Whoever wrote that carol should be shot. It haunts my nightmares more than ‘elf love Thursday.’”
With combat operations in the War on Christmas now over with a humiliating withdrawal, President Biden faces a fresh round of criticism over his decision to suddenly end the generation-long conflict with no plan for a stable peace.
“The war’s been going on for 20 years — c’mon, man,” a visibly distressed Biden said at a news conference. “And hey — if any of you plan on calling Santa for comment, can you ask if he got my letter? I want a pony!” he said before his handlers lured him offstage with a candy cane.
Former President George W. Bush deployed the first ground troops to the War on Christmas in 2003 following Christmas’s invasion of Labor Day.
“Appeasement didn’t stop World War II, and it won’t stop Christmas,” Bush told a joint session of Congress in the run-up to war. “We sat on our hands as Christmas took over Thanksgiving, then Veterans Day. Then, Christmas said it would be satisfied with Columbus Day. Now here we are, the end of August, and Costco already has its Christmas trees up. No more — Christmas must be stopped.”
However, a quick initial victory bogged down into a years-long insurgency that stretched over four presidencies and 19 holiday shopping seasons.
