Man, this whole War on Christmas is getting confusing.

Right on cue, the right-wing media this month has been waging its annual battle to convince faithful followers that religious-hating liberals are at war with Christmas, and that once again Obama is leading the charge to demean the holiday. The evidence for those charges has always been non-existent, but the allegations, like holiday fruitcakes, keep coming.

More problematic though, is what happens when the First Family opens the White House for the season to thousands of visitors and the residence resembles a Hollywood-like Christmas wonderland?

If you're former Los Angeles Times blogger Andrew Malcolm, you flip the script and denounce the Obamas for celebrating the Christmas season too robustly; for going overboard in a thoughtless manner.

You can't make this up:

The economy may be weak, unemployment strong and the first family soon to vacate the White House for another half-month of vacation in Hawaii. But the Obamas have gone all out in decorating their house this year, including a nearly quarter-ton gingerbread White House.

They have also installed 37 different Christmas trees. Thirty of the trees are live, or were, including one nearly 19-feet tall from Wisconsin. Seven of the three dozen Christmas trees are artificial or homemade including, of course, one from recyclables.

See, forget all those claims about trying to rub out Christmas all together. According to the new fevered spin, the Obamas are actually rubbing people's faces in the Christmas season and flaunting the decorations.

Here's my favorite part from Malcolm:

How simple, politically astute, symbolically helpful and cost-effective it would have been for the Obamas this year to say that in sympathy with so many struggling countrymen, they were curtailing holiday decorations to match the sacrifices of others.

Right. Now imagine the seismic eruption that would have occurred if the Obamas announced they were curtailing (banning!!) Christmas decorations in the White House this year. Talk about a five-alarm fire for Fox News. The First Family would have been denounced as Grinch-like heathens.

The comedy, of course, is that Obama's restless critics can't even decide if the president is guilty of ignoring Christmas, or guilty of exploiting it.