If you say "Happy holidays" or "Season's greetings," it makes the Baby Jesus cry. This, however is perfectly compatible with traditional Judeo-Christian values -- or so I assume because I've never heard Bill O'Reilly or John Gibson utter a negative word about it:

IN this season of merrymaking, the snow falls thick and fast in Las Vegas. It flurries over leaping pecan reindeer at the Bellagio, blankets "booty-shaking" holiday disco dancers downtown in Glitter Gulch.... Made of soap flakes or SnoWonder -- a plastic the texture of Jell-O (just add water) -- it is snow as illusion, snow as Las Vegas would have it: Not virgin....

...The ageless Mr. [Wayne] Newton begins his show at Harrah's with "Jingle Bell Rock," holding his audience in the palm of his bejeweled hand, his pompadour as black as night. "It's the holidays," he tells them, reciting the credo of Las Vegas. "So you might as well live it up, right?"

...For visitors seeking an Only-in-Fabulous-Las-Vegas kind of Christmas, ... the most dazzling and uplifting spectacles are two free Christmas shows -- the Rio’s third annual "Show in the Sky Holiday Spectacular" and "Holiday Fever" on Fremont Street, in which Santas have navel jewelry and serious cleavage, and N-O-E-L is spelled S-E-X.

Forget Donner. Think Vixen.

Here is the Christmas carol as double entendre, in which "the ring-ting-tingling" of a "sleigh ride together with you" becomes deliciously salacious. Afterward at the Rio, a bare-chested Chippendales Santa appears on the stage, bouncing an old lady from the audience on his knee. This is Vegas, baby: there is no doubt she knows exactly what she wants for Christmas.

When I was a kid, "keeping Christ in Christmas" was a real concern for a lot of people, including quite a few on the religious left -- that's basically what "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is about. None of today's culture warriors give a crap about that now. All they care about is keeping "Christmas" in Christmas -- the word is all that matters, and if you run a cash register you damn well better utter it, even if your customer is wearing a yarmulke or a hijab. Vegas? Who cares? Those people are secularists and vulgarians, but at least they're not liberals.


The ageless Mr. Wayne Newton. There's more botulinum toxin in this face than there was in Iraq under Saddam.