No war on Christmas, huh? One of "hundreds" of battles over Christmas, the LA Times reported, is taking place in Santa Monica.

For the last sixty years, Santa Monica-area churches set up nativity scenes in the public Palisades Park. This year, atheists applied for and reserved 18 of the 21 spots that are open to display, forcing the churches to downsize their displays. The LA Times reports:

The Nativity story that once took 14 displays to tell -- from the Annunciation, continuing to the manger in Bethlehem and onto infant Jesus' journey to Egypt and back to Nazareth -- had to be abridged to three and crammed into two plots.

Now, people walking down the sidewalk pass scenes of the Annunciation, the creche and tidings of "Peace on Earth." Then, a few yards away, a poster from American Atheists: "37 Million Americans Know MYTHS When They See Them. What do you see?"

How mean-spirited, and what a interesting picture they paint of liberal "tolerance." 

Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of Freedom From Religion Foundation, called the displays "litter."

"It's littering -- literally, littering -- these spaces," Gaylor said of such displays, which she said are a "territorial attempt by Christians to impose their beliefs in this season."

"That creates an atmosphere of intimidation," said Gaylor, who noted that the organization's banner was destroyed by vandals after being hung in Palisades Park. "Christians are the insiders, and everyone else is an outsider."

It seems Gaynor's group is the only party trying to intimidate anybody. She said December is FFRF's busiest time of the year for the organization's attorneys. People need to be threatened with lawsuits, after all.