The American Atheists organization is trying to convert Christians this holiday season with an Anti-Christian Christmas billboard campaign:

The giant advertising hoardings in the Tennessee cities of Memphis, Nashville, St. Louis and Fort Smith, Arkansas show a mischievous-looking young girl writing her letter to Father Christmas: “Dear Santa, All I want for Christmas is to skip church! I’m too old for fairy tales,” she writes.

The advertising campaign by the American Atheists group will run until Christmas Eve and is the first time the group has aimed its anti-God adverts directly at residential religious areas, having previously targeted urban audiences in big venues such as Times Square in New York.

I guess the irony here is that the girl apparently believes in Santa, but is too old for fairy tales. Hilarious. Sometimes I wonder why atheists are so concerned with what everyone else does or doesn’t believe. And do they really think this anti-Christian Christmas campaign will actually change anyone’s mind?

Here’s how it’s going to play out: Anti-Christians will see the billboards and think, “Oh, yeah. Stick it to those ignorant, close-minded Christians.” Christians will see the billboards and think, “That’s offensive. I’m going to call the billboard company and complain. Or boycott something.” Liberal-minded unbelievers will think, “Can’t we all just get along?”

So, in the aggregate, I would imagine these billboards will have absolutely no effect but to increase division and re-affirm what people already believe. In those terms, atheists prove themselves no more open-minded than the Christians they criticize. This anti-Christian Christmas message is just another version of preaching to the choir. Christians are regularly criticized that their messages do nothing to convince the unconvinced. But, if this anti-Christian Christmas ad campaign is any indication, atheists fall prey to the same error.

It’s sad. I don’t think anyone can deny that Christmas owes most of its charm to its roots in Christian charity and brotherly kindness. Do atheists really believe they can retain that fruit if they cut out its root? They may have great faith in this possibility, but facts speak differently.

Officially atheist countries have not traditionally been known as paragons of communal joy, civic virtue, equality, or open-mindedness. Atheist countries have instead been characterized as brutal, dismal, joyless, tyrannical, stagnant places. In fact, as the US has drifted from its Christian roots, it has also begun to deteriorate in these areas.

So, perhaps atheists should consider these hard facts, and cease their anti-Christian Christmas sermonizing. The idea that a society can be “good without God” is a fantasy. And atheists are grown-ups after all. Perhaps they need to stop believing in fairy tales.