Well, here’s how to get a story entirely wrong. And the producer is the Wall Street Journal.

Every year we get bombarded with news stories about towns, counties, schools, corporations and retailers that mess with Christmas. They call it “Winter Festival,” they ban mangers and angels and swap in Santas and snowflakes and take the Christ entirely out of the holiday. I was following one of those stories a week or so ago, in Ft. Collins, Colorado, but they happen all over the country. And don’t get me started on the Christmas madness in Europe.

So the American Family Association wants to take a look-see whether retailers in New York are doing the “holiday” for Christmas swap in their marketing. The WSJ sent out a reporter to inquire, but the reporter doesn’t ask any retailers about their marketing, which is what the AFA is interested in. He asks average folks on the streets whether the tree he’s holding is a Christmas tree or a “holiday” tree, apparently thinking that if the Christmas marketing has been sufficiently secular, everyone he asks will already zombie out and answer “holiday” tree. The only thing he ends up demonstrating is that the annual controversies over Christmas don’t come from regular folk. They all seem to think the question is silly, which it is.