By JEFF PICKELL

The war hasn’t even begun, but it’s already time for a truce, or at least a continued truce.

Tomorrow is Dec. 1, the annual start date of the “War on Christmas,” a 25-day conflict that only serves to make people grumble during what should be the most wonderful time of the year, the hap-happiest season of all.

When you stop to think about it, it’s all a little silly —the idea that Christmas is an embattled holiday merely because some corporations wish customers “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings” instead of “Merry Christmas.”

Since the founding of this country, the vast majority of Americans have celebrated Christmas. The vast majority continues to celebrate Christmas.

Yet, many conservative commentators consider the change in salutation an assault on Christmas by the liberal left. Writer John Gibson even went so far as to publish a book titled “The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought.”

That’s a pretty fallacious premise, since it’s our understanding that few people, if anybody—liberals included—think of a plot to ban Christmas. Well, at least until accusations are tossed about in the mainstream media come early December.

Were there really a liberal plot to purge Christmas from American culture, wouldn’t there be protest rallies at stores—like Wal-mart—that endorse the “Merry Christmas” greeting? How about at Christmas tree farms?

Most liberals aren’t fussy about holiday salutations. As Jewish commentator Sam Seder explained on the Fox News Channel last year, when a Christian wishes him “Merry Christmas,” he thanks them, but compares it to wishing him happy birthday on the wrong day.

“Happy Holidays” is inclusive—it wishes Christians a merry Christmas, Jews a happy Hanukkah, African Americans a happy Kwanzaa. Nobody’s left out. Companies are granting salutations to all groups in order to attract more people to their stores to spend money.

That’s all it boils down to—corporations don’t want to exclude anyone from the holiday spending bonanza.

Now, is that really something to get in a huff about? We say no. In Iraq, America is in the midst of a real war, one that’s becoming a deeper quagmire by the minute.

That’s something to fret about this holiday season.