Our guest columnist wishes you would stop goading Fox News into demagoguing a stolen pagan holiday, and surely extends the same detailed heartfelt consideration to Ramadan.

My family and I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas! I offer this to all because Christmas is a holiday for all, whether you are a Christian believer or not. The message of Christmas is full of hope, peace, joy, and the fellowship of all mankind; so I find it amazing that every year we hear more accounts of a ramped up “war on Christmas.”

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We’ve been ignoring the whole Ron Paul Racist Newsletter Thing because we thought it had been done four years ago, and that the verdict was he had been incredibly stupid to let something like that go under his name.

That is: We were satisfied that Ron Paul had profoundly racist minions whom he wasn’t paying attention to, whatever his own considered views on Rational Bigotry, and we figured that was damning enough.

And besides, racism isn’t as fun as serial adultery or clueless wealth.

But folks are hitting the Nexises, Lexises, and Googles, and turned up some new evidence:

Rep. Ron Paul has tried since 2001 to disavow racist and incendiary language published in Texas newsletters that bore his name, denying he wrote them and even walking out of an interview on CNN Wednesday. But he vouched for the accuracy of the writings and admitted writing at least some of the passages when first asked about them in an interview in 1996.

Well! That is news! Go on:

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[via Know Your Meme]

“Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin told Fox News & Commentary that she found the card to be a bit unusual. ‘It’s odd,’ she said, wondering why the president’s Christmas card highlights his dog instead of traditions like ‘family, faith and freedom.’” [Fox]

[Atlantic]

“It’s a time-honored tradition at Navy homecomings — one lucky sailor is chosen to be first off the ship for the long-awaited kiss with a loved one. Today, for the first time, the happily reunited couple was gay.” [Virginian-Pilot, via @sarah_sprague]

We were born two blocks off the University of Oregon campus, around the corner from what would later be filmed as the Animal House. We don’t recall whether we were there for Autzen Stadium’s opening day in 1967, but we would haunt the endzone “Knothole Gang” with the other kids soon enough.

(Note: Autzen Stadium is cement, and has no knotholes.)

We watched Fouts. We watched Norv. We watched Bobby Moore, who would grow up to be Ahmad Rashad and marry Bill Cosby’s wife.

Our high school played its football games there Friday nights. Then, and for a couple years in college, we played trumpet in the marching band. We were intensely jealous of the Stanford band, which got to run around and have fun while we were stuck doing the same goddamn circular formation halftime after halftime after halftime. The fifth time it was announced, the fans started booing. We agreed with them.

But none of it mattered. The Ducks sucked. They were featured in the satirical “Bottom Ten” column so often, the local newspaper canceled it. That was a sad day. We enjoyed being losers. Hey, it’s only football. No point taking it seriously.

We loved that about Eugene.

Unfortunately, people wealthier than us had other ideas.

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