WASHINGTON -- I haven't received my White House Christmas card -- it must be lost in the mail -- but I know from news reports that some Christians are apoplectic that our born-again president and his wife are offering "best wishes for a holiday season of hope and happiness" instead of an old-fashioned "Merry Christmas."

My parochial reaction to the card controversy was that it was nice for Pittsburgh to be in the vanguard for a change. Usually it takes a few years for trends in fashion or politics to find their way to the 'Burgh from bigger cities. But when it comes to silly arguments about the season, Pittsburgh was way ahead of Washington, D.C. In the mid-1990s, when George W. Bush was still governor of Texas, Pittsburghers were grousing about the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership's rechristening -- or un-christening -- the Christmas shopping season as "Sparkle Season."

"It's Christmas, it's not Sparkle Season," one reader said in a letter to the Post-Gazette. "I don't believe in shoving religion down people's throats. But everybody is afraid to believe in anything. Everyone is so afraid of offending anyone anymore, it turns into a generic world."

That was a perfectly civil criticism of Sparkle Season. Sadly, much nastier comments circulated in those days, such as the complaint that S.S. was a plot by "Jewish-owned" department stores to take Christ out of Christmas.

The Sparkle-bashers would have none of that, and seemed perversely to experience withdrawal symptoms when the Downtown Partnership finally deep-sixed the unfortunate name. For several Christmases thereafter, I heard from readers who were still steaming about S.S., not on purely religious grounds but out of an aggrieved sense that "Sparkle Season" was part of a pervasive plot to make inhabitants of this "Christian nation" feel like strangers in their own land.

That majoritarian mean-spiritedness isn't just a 'Burgh thing anymore. It's gone national, and, in a delightful irony, it is being unleashed on a president who famously described Jesus as his favorite political philosopher. Ho ho ho.

To be fair, not all of the appalled reaction to Sparkle Season came from Christians who wanted cultural bragging rights to the holiday season. Some of it was a natural reaction to the touchy-feely inclusiveness of school "holiday pageants" and Nativity scenes that, in deference to the Supreme Court, were augmented with Frosty the Snowman, reindeer and symbols of Kwanzaa. (Hey, while we're at it, let's throw in a Terrible Towel.)

I confess to being a bit conflicted about this second kind of Sparklephobia. I've spoken to too many chauvinistic Christians over the years to doubt that for some people the primary point of "keeping Christ in Christmas" is to make non-Christians feel like outsiders. The same impulse is discernible in a lot of the oratory in defense of Ten Commandments monuments on public property.

Yet one can be a liberal -- even a secular humanist -- and still be bemused by the impulse to enfold all religious and cultural differences in a group hug, as if those differences didn't matter. Such sappy, self-conscious ecumenism will not go unmocked. For example, I will never tire of the hilarious "holiday carol" from the satirical TV show "Mystery Science Theater 3000":

Alas, it isn't funny when the culture wars over Christmas encroach on a really sacred institution like the U.S. Supreme Court. But this week religious conservatives set up a Nativity scene on Capitol Hill near the court so that "every day the Supreme Court justices will see it and legislators will walk past it" (though I managed to visit the court yesterday without catching sight of it).

But why stop there? A conservative Catholic group called Fidelis plans to mount a Christmas-themed publicity campaign backing the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr.

"This season is a special time when many Americans commemorate our Judeo-Christian faith traditions," Fidelis President Joseph Cella said. "So while we prepare for our celebrations and give thanks for our treasured religious freedom, we unfortunately have to prepare for those freedoms and people who defend them to be attacked by the ACLU and their allies."

The Fidelis statement noted that "liberal groups [are] citing Judge Alito's 1999 decision in ACLU v. Schundler allowing a religious holiday display in front of the Jersey City, N.J., city hall that included a Christian Nativity scene and a Jewish Menorah as proof that Judge Alito would further erode their extreme version of the 'wall of separation' between church and state."

"We will provide a vigorous defense of Judge Alito who is being brought into the war on religious freedom by liberal groups who are out of touch with American values on religion," Mr. Cella said.

Hmm. Would those "American values on religion" include a 4-foot plastic figure of Santa Claus, a 3-foot-10-inch plastic figure of Frosty the Snowman, a 4-foot sled and Kwanzaa symbols on the Christmas tree?

Because those were among the components of the display in Jersey City upheld by Judge Alito in the Schundler case. The display also included a sign stating: "Through this display and others throughout the year, the City of Jersey City is pleased to celebrate the diverse cultural and ethnic heritages of its peoples."

That sounds a lot like a non-musical version of the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" carol. Maybe this year Jersey City could add a picture of a guy whose name is Greg.