Wow, someone's cranky this Christmas In Keillor's case, maybe that's just the way he is.  But perhaps his complaint is valid (if misdirected). Mitch Pearlstein

Merry Christmas, one and all. Or, as Mel Torment and the rest of us down here at the deli serenade Garrison Keillor every year, "Ich bin ein Irving Berliner."

Did Keillor really tell Jews to scram because he doesn't like listening to Christmas songs written by Chosen Composers while at the Dales? Doesn't he know that Bing Crosby's rendition of Berlin's "White Christmas" is the biggest-selling record of all time? And that Nat King Cole's recording of Mel Torme's "The Christmas Song" has sold pretty well also, and not just to the latter's extended mishpokhe (that's Yiddish for "family").

But there it was, in Sunday's Star Tribune ("Some things aren't meant to be messed with," Dec. 20). Instead of good will toward men (and women), we read: "And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year. Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write 'Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we'll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah?' No, we didn't."

And then: "Christmas is a Christian holiday -- if you're not in the club, then buzz off."

Even granting the kind of literary license that icons and other stars usually get, especially "progressive" ones who are assumed to be more tolerant than most, doesn't Keillor realize that writing things like that can get a person's chestnuts roasted, right out there on an open fire? He wasn't any nicer to Unitarians, by the way.

Oh, well. As brilliant a writer as he is -- and he really is -- it also has been clear, and for a long time now, that Garrison Keillor can be one dyspeptic and nasty dude. His years of truly vile, albeit stylish, bile directed at George W. Bush are recent. But my favorite story about his sourness goes back to 1987 when I was an editorial writer for the Pioneer Press and Keillor (temporarily) shut down "A Prairie Home Companion" and moved far away.

The St. Paul paper, it's fair to say, covered his exit as if beloved royalty were leaving town; it was that adulatory and respectful. But Keillor was mad at the newspaper in those days, and wound up writing a letter to the editor that said (this is pretty much an exact quote, if I recall): "People who choose to read the Pioneer Press choose to live lesser lives." I remember my editor at the time, the late and first-rate Ron Clark, saying, "Talk about leaving town with bad gas."

So never mind merely ripping a Republican president, or telling scattered folks to take a hike; Keillor is a veteran of demeaning half of the Twin Cities metropolitan area.

Still, and in fairness, if at the core of his displeasure is the way Christians are more frequently dismissed and ignored when they believe their traditions are dishonored than is the case with members of other faiths, I appreciate the point.

If he's also disgruntled by the ways in which it has grown increasingly hard to celebrate Christmas in publicly full-throated and spirited ways, I stand with him.

If he's had enough of ubiquitous sensitivity specialists staying up late worrying about whether otherwise decent men and women might possibly wish their diverse fellows "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays," thereby offending finely tuned feelings, I'm with him again. And the same holds whenever steamed-up lawyers are bullet-fast to seek injunctions if a village chooses to add a crèche to its square.

I'm far from the only person to have made the point in recent years, but why aren't minority groups (defined in both religious and other ways) more readily expected to be just as respectful of the traditions and prerogatives of majority groups as majority groups are obliged to be respectful of theirs? Humorist and serious guy Ben Stein gets it perfectly right when he writes:

"I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians." As well as: "It doesn't bother me a bit when people say 'Merry Christmas' to me. ... In fact I like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year."

As long as Wobegon columnists don't persist in settling scores with long-gone lyricists, that would seem to mean all us.