Ah, it's that time of year again. City workers putting up Christmas decorations. Seasonal music piping through retail establishments. Secular humanists resuming their annual plot to dismantle the fabric of American society.

That's right, the annual war on Christmas -- or, rather, people screaming into megaphones about what they imagine to be a war on Christmas -- is under way.

The ungodliest of this year's combatants is the Gap, which offended the American Family Association by daring to run advertising that does not prominently feature the word Christmas.

So a boycott was called against the Gap and sister chains Old Navy and Banana Republic.

Writes the AFA's Buddy Smith:

A few days later, the Gap issued a new holiday ad that features a cloying group of young people engaging in a dance routine with a chant that mentions Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwaanza and the winter solstice. It ends: "Happy Whateveryouwannakah."

Maybe not exactly Clio Award material, but hey, it's just an ad, right? Nope, still not enough for the AFA, which decried it as "completely dismissive and disrespectful to those who celebrate the meaning and spirit of Christmas ...

"If this is Gap's answer to recognizing Christmas, we are deeply disappointed."

The Dallas Republican Examiner's Victor Medina was similarly unimpressed with the new ad:

I don't have a business degree, but isn't that kind of the point of retail? Never mind.

The Los Angeles Times' Dan Neil points out the hypocrisy of the AFA's position:

For a few years in high school and college, I worked retail. During the holiday shopping season -- sorry, Christmas shopping season -- I would stand at a register for eight hours a day and say the following thing: "Thank you very much. Happy holidays."

One time, a woman corrected me. "You mean merry Christmas," she said.

I stared blankly at her for a second, then temporarily broke out of my drone-like stupor to calmly explain, "No, I actually meant 'happy holidays'. You see, there is a holiday one week after Christmas, New Year's Day, and I was merely expressing my sincere wish that both of these occasions fill you with merriment, ma'am."

So there. By saying "happy holidays," I was not, in fact, participating in the war on Christmas. I was merely doubling the holiday well-wishing. If I had my wits about me at the time, I would have accused the customer of engaging in a war on New Year's.

But I digress. I have to say, this year's attempt to get people angry about the war on Christmas is pretty lame. The Gap? Really, is that the best the AFA can do? No baby Jesuses getting evicted from government land this year?

Wait, here we go. Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear got a steady stream of phone calls and e-mails when his administration mentioned the lighting of a holiday tree rather than a Christmas tree.

Also, in Massachusetts, an elementary school ordered all references to holidays removed from items in an annual fundraiser, which was enough for Fox News to declare that the opening salvo in this year's war on Christmas had been fired. Except the school is banning all holiday items, which means it's also participating in the war on Hanukkah, the war on Kwaanza, etc.

So the so-called battle rages on, with ever less fanfare.

Last word goes to Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon:

E-mail Troy Reimink: treimink@grpress.com