The ACLU didn’t steal Christmas, but don’t think that’s about to stop Jerry Falwell in his remarkably unoriginal new drive, “Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign,” which will enlist 8,000 members of the Christian Educators Association International to monitor public schools for “misinformation about how Christmas can be celebrated in schools and public spaces.” While conservative Christian activist groups gear up for the fearmongering fundraising season — again targeting, well, Target — and liberal groups groan in protest that there is no conspiracy, Michelle Goldberg of Salon.com delivers a lesson on the history of Christmas hysterias, from 1959, when the John Birch Society blamed the Reds and the U.N. for plots to weaken the pillar of American religion by taking the Christ out of Christmas (TCOC) and installing “internationalist celebrations of universal brotherhood” instead, to today’s Bill O’Reilly updates on “Christmas Under Siege” — a good illustration of both the evergreen nature of the complaint, but more importantly, of how what was once the fringe notion of a discredited group, is now the conviction of the masses.