Dec. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Boston's Parks Department fired the shot that started the latest ``War on Christmas.''

The city's Nov. 10 announcement on the lighting of a ``holiday tree'' was remarked on by a CBS4 broadcaster for failing to mention Christmas. A conservative Christian group, the Orlando, Florida-based Liberty Counsel, saw the report and threatened to sue.

The fight to put Christmas back into the holiday season had begun.

Fox News television commentator Bill O'Reilly stoked the controversy, criticizing retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. for ``holiday'' ads. The House of Representatives passed a resolution against bans on the use of ``Christmas.'' And House Speaker Dennis Hastert proclaimed the former ``Holiday Tree'' on the Capitol lawn a ``Capitol Christmas Tree.''

The aim is ``to make sure Christmas is not censored from the holiday season,'' said Mathew Staver, founder and president of Liberty Counsel, a legal advocacy group affiliated with Reverend Jerry Falwell. ``It's political correctness run amok.''

No one in Boston's City Hall is willing to say who decided that the 48-foot white spruce from Nova Scotia would be dubbed a ``holiday'' tree. But by Nov. 30 the conifer had become ``the city's official Christmas tree.''

``It's a Christmas tree,'' said Mayor Thomas Menino in an interview on Dec. 20 as he went to host his annual party for the media, called a ``holiday reception'' on the invitations. His spokesman, Seth Gitell, declined further comment.

Holiday Boycott

The Catholic League of New York led a boycott against Wal- Mart last month that lasted about two days. The group protested Wal-Mart's use of ``holiday'' in advertisements and greetings. Christians celebrate Dec. 25 as the day Christ was born.

Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, changed its Web site to send Christmas shoppers directly to lists of merchandise rather than a ``holiday gift'' page. Store clerks can use any greeting, and the word ``Christmas'' is used in TV ads, spokesman Dan Fogleman said.

Complaints were filed with Lowe's Cos. for selling evergreens under banners reading ``Holiday Trees,'' an ``inadvertent mistake,'' spokeswoman Chris Ahearn said.

The home improvement retailer of Mooresville, North Carolina, replaced them with signs saying ``Christmas Trees'' in late November, she said.

The American Family Association in Tupelo, Mississippi, lists more than a dozen retailers on its Web site that the group says omit references to Christmas in advertising and in stores.

In Georgia, ``a politically correct staff brain-freeze'' led to the use of ``holiday tree'' in an announcement of a Dec. 4 event at the mansion of Republican Governor Sonny Perdue, spokesman Dan McLagan said.

McLagan retracted it and sent out a version about a ``Christmas tree'' lighting.

`Pervasive'

``It's actually an example of how pervasive political correctness is in our society that someone in this office would think the governor would call it anything other than a Christmas tree,'' McLagan said in an interview.

President Bush ran afoul of Christmas campaigners with his official greeting cards this year, even though the same wish to supporters for a happy ``Holiday Season'' has been used since 2001. His father, former President George H.W. Bush, used Christmas on his cards. Former President Bill Clinton did not.

Even Congress stepped into the debate. On Dec. 15, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 401 to 22 to agree with a resolution that says it ``strongly disapproves of attempts to ban references to Christmas.'' All the no votes came from Democrats.

`The War'

Discussion over the use of ``Christmas'' isn't new. Liberty Counsel began its campaign three years ago, and Fox News Channel personalities have focused on the issue since at least last year. Fox News anchor John Gibson even wrote a book about it, called ``The War on Christmas,'' that was published in October.

Falwell, an evangelical Baptist who founded the Moral Majority advocacy group in 1979, has rallied followers for at least a year to defend Christmas from ``secularists'' trying to strip it of religious meaning.

``I am not going to let oppressive, totalitarian, anti- Christian forces in this country diminish and denigrate the holiday and the celebration,'' said O'Reilly, according to a Dec. 2 radio broadcast transcript posted on the Web site of New York Public Radio station WNYC-FM.

Atonement

About 50 yards from the tree in Boston Common, a downtown park, stands a life-size Nativity scene. Such public displays are commonplace in Massachusetts, where one of every two people is Catholic.

It hasn't always been that way. The Puritans who settled and ran Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 17th century banned Christmas celebrations for years, said Mark Silk, founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Calvinist Puritans saw Christmas as a day for atonement.

``The people who set up Boston Common wouldn't have been caught dead putting a Christmas tree up,'' Silk said.

This year's tree, an annual gift from the city of Halifax, arrived on a truck bearing a sign that said ``Merry Christmas Boston.'' The donor, Donald Hatt, didn't return a telephone call seeking comment.

In a Dec. 21 report by Halifax's Chronicle Herald, Hatt said if he had known that Boston would call it a holiday tree, ``I'd have cut it down and put it through the chipper.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Ted Bunker in Boston at tbunker1@Bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: December 23, 2005 00:11 EST