Even though we’ve barely hung the Halloween decorations, I’m sure everyone with lots of time on their hands is anticipating the annual festive War on Christmas.

Let me first observe that this “war” is so fake, it could have been invented by Kellyanne Conway. Forget Bowling Green. Doesn’t anyone remember the Christmas Eve Midnight Massacre?

But our Man-Child in Chief, who never met a cultural conflict he couldn’t exploit and pummel to the ground with his tiny hands, got a jump on the issue Friday when he addressed the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., and assured these Christian conservatives that he will save their sacred holiday from the gay and lesbian heathens.

“We are getting near the beautiful Christmas season that people don’t talk about anymore,” Trump said. “They don’t use the word ‘Christmas’ because it’s not politically correct.”

Ha, Ha! He cannot be serious. Christmas is a federal holiday observed widely by the nation’s Christian majority. We celebrate Christmas so dutifully that people actually kill themselves in a festive display of Yuletide depression.

Regardless, Trump continued, “You go to department stores and they’ll say 'Happy New Year,' or they’ll say other things and it’ll be red, they’ll have it painted. But they don’t say — well, guess what? We’re saying 'Merry Christmas' again.”

His always articulate words were greeted with a standing ovation by the Values Voter Summit, and his appearance was actually a two-fer, because any group with the word “Values” in its name is typically a far-right organization devoted almost exclusively to hatred of homosexuals. The summit is sponsored by the Family Research Council, which says the following on its website:

“Homosexual conduct is harmful to the persons who engage in it and to society at large, and can never be affirmed … We oppose the vigorous efforts of homosexual activists to demand that homosexuality be accepted as equivalent to heterosexuality in law, in the media and in schools.”

Well, tra la la. It’s rather ironic that Trump defended Christmas to the homophobes because, speaking from personal experience, no one can throw a Christmas bash quite like gay men, who take great pride in adorning their home with the latest holiday decor featuring glitter, and one of my gay male friends even hires a piano player so everyone can gather around and sing traditional religious carols such as “Santa Baby,” “Merry Christmas Baby” and “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” all of which are apparently devoted to the Baby Jesus.

I foolishly thought we were finished with this fake war after the departure of Bill O’Reilly who, always ahead of the curve, got fired from Fox News for harassing women months before Harvey Weinstein got the boot for harassing women. O’Reilly had long stoked the myth of the War on Christmas and in 2012 told viewers that liberals were “tying the Christmas situation into secular progressive politics” because they wanted “a new America, and traditional Christmas isn’t a part of it.”

That’s quite a conspiracy theory. In reality, of course, many people who say “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas” are simply trying to be inclusive and sensitive to those of other faiths, and it shouldn’t be such a big deal, but Trump feeds so much red meat to his base that they should be forced to undergo biannual cholesterol screenings so they don’t drain the health care system.

Trump actually kicked off the War on Christmas last year at the “Celebrate Freedom” event at the Kennedy Center, when he said, “We’re going to start saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again” - presumably at gunpoint if necessary - and after he won the election his surrogates announced that Trump has saved Christmas.

“You can say again, ‘Merry Christmas,’ because Donald Trump is now the president,” announced former Trump campaign manager Cory Lewandowski, who left the campaign in June 2016 after it was revealed that, in an apparent nod toward religious freedom, he tended to handle protesters by grabbing them roughly by the collar.

So we can add the bogus Christmas battle to yet another social issue used by Trump to divide rather than unite. In the meantime, in the spirit of Kellyanne Conway, let us bow our heads to commemorate the brave souls we lost in the historic Nativity Scene Slaughter.