It seems odd in today's America, but back when I was a kid, I knew plenty of people who practiced the "don't discuss religion or politics," theory of conversation. My parents would not tell each other how they planned to vote.

Boy, is that gone. I can't walk out of the house without someone who is longing to bore me to death with his/her dearly held political/religious views. I write opinion for a living, too, principally because I have a good appetite and no skills that can be applied to transmission repair.

Christmas is now as political as anything else. War on Christmas. What color was Jesus? Wasn't it all better when you were a kid?

I love Christmas. I always have. I'm a reporter and, on Christmas Eve, I wear a Santa Claus hat to work. This is far from standard practice in a newsroom. I wear ties featuring elves and snowmen. I whistle carols. I subsist on a diet of hot chocolate and Christmas cookies. I use a Zippo lighter with Santa engraved on the side. I have a small, lighted Christmas tree on my desk.

In short, I am a tinseled nuisance, an oversized, gray-haired elf who smells like cigars and, hopefully, holly.

I don't like talking about my religious beliefs, so much of what I do in public is what I call "civic Christmas," that sloppy blend of fairy tale, folk belief, merchandising and cheap sentimentality.

It gets dark early this time of year and, driving home from work, going to the drug store to get a prescription for my mother or going to the library to return a book, I take the long way home, looking for lights on houses.

I like multicolored likes, blinking or nonblinking. I'm less fond of the white-only lights. I like the plastic, lit-from-within lawn Santa Claus. I like those giant inflatable Santas, too. I like the animated reindeer that raise and lower their heads, like they're grazing. I like wreathes and front doors wrapped like presents and electric candles in windows.

If there is a "war on Christmas," it's not dimming the lights much, at least not in the blue corner of the blue state where I live.

I like the decorations in front of City Hall, too, the big tree, the plywood gingerbread house and toy soldiers. There's no Jesus in front of City Hall. That's fine. Jesus lives in your heart, not on the sidewalk five floors below the office of the zoning board.

I like spreading joy in my way, giving presents, bellowing "Merry Christmas" at friends, guzzling eggnog flavored cookies, eggnog flavored cake, eggnog lattes and, of course, eggnog.

But I am most my Christmas self in my truck, alone or with my wife, driving down a side street where no one I know lives, looking at the lights on people's houses.

In my 20s, I dated a girl who said she didn't understand my love of Christmas lights.

"You don't know if nice people live in that house," she'd say as I pointed out a lovely, jolly plastic Frosty the Snowman in someone's yard. "Some guy could be in here beating his wife."

I did not marry her.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.

Photo credit: