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Glite Dictionary
war on Christmas

war on Christmas

1 8.4
A claim that some people are trying to stop public Christmas celebrations
  • noun
  • /wɔr ɑn ˈkrɪs·məs/
  • Literature
translation icon : guerra contra la Navidad
  • The debate about the war on Christmas has become a common topic in media every December.

And you emailed with us about the imaginary war on Christmas.

Examples

  • Critics argue that the war on Christmas undermines the holiday's traditional significance.

  • It's still like always a new crisis, always a new war on Christmas, doom and gloom.

  • Many people believe that there is a war on Christmas due to the increasing commercialization of the holiday.

Surface Forms

war on Christmas singular
wars on Christmas plural

Morphology

war + on + Christmas

The meaning is directly derivable from the constituents: 'war' used figuratively as a campaign or struggle + 'on' indicating targeting + 'Christmas' yields 'a campaign against Christmas'. The 'war on X' pattern is productive and common in English (e.g. 'war on drugs'), so a B1 learner who knows the individual words should infer the intended meaning.

Etymology

War on Christmas uses the strong image of war attacking Christmas to show the idea that the holiday is being attacked. One popular story says talk shows and writers began using this picture to warn that public Christmas traditions were under threat, so today it means 'a claimed campaign against the public celebration of Christmas'.