Matt Sharp, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal advocacy organization that has been designated an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center: Unfortunately, [the war on Christmas is] part of a larger cultural battle. You look at situations like the case we argued at the Supreme Court [recently]—Masterpiece cake shop with Jack Phillips. Christian baker who was trying to operate his business consistent with his beliefs … We see the state of Colorado coming after him and saying sorry, you can't operate your business and hold those beliefs in that manner.
Andrew Hartman, professor of history at Illinois State University, author of A War for the Soul of America, a book about the culture wars: When conservative Christians began to complain about secularism, really beginning in the 1960s, and then this really picked up steam in the 70s, they had a point ... You get a series of [Supreme Court] decisions, but the most famous one — or infamous one, depending on who you ask — is the Engel vs. Vitale decision in 1962, which outlaws prayer in school. And this decision just caused a massive uproar amongst religious conservatives.
...And so going after secular humanism on one level was a way to fight back against what felt like an attack on Christianity, or an attack on religious expression.
Trump has readily adopted O'Reilly's broader approach to the war on Christmas. Looking at the last 15 years, people who were in the business of the war on Christmas say you can connect the dots between its rhetoric and some of Trump’s current talking points.
Javerbaum: I think you look back on it, and clearly everything — it's a cause and effect. Everything leads to what's happening now. Everything that came before this on Fox was a prelude to what's happening now. Every single thing. So this was absolutely part of that.
Gibson: Trump has a special skill at sort of figuring out, like doctors do, how you hit the knee and make it jerk.
...If you wanna say — Donald Trump voters are the same people who, you know, talk about the war on Christmas, talk about the wall, talk about an immigration ban, yeah.
Hartman: The key point ... is we take these cultural expressions seriously, because yeah, ok, so Fox News is sort of doing this to gin up ratings. They're all about profit, of course. But if a lot of people are sort of eating this stuff up, there's a larger historical or social reason for that.