Go right ahead. Who’s stopping you?

I’ve heard so much nonsense this year about politicians, TV commentators and some conservative groups getting all huffy and claiming people are afraid to say "Merry Christmas."

One legal organization called the Alliance Defense Fund says it has 800 lawyers just itching to sue anybody who gets in its way. Its slogan is: "Merry Christmas. It’s OK to say it."

Well sure it is, fellas. Now don’t you think it might be time to consider switching to decaf?

As someone who isn’t Christian and doesn’t celebrate Christmas, let me assure you there is no great conspiracy to rip Christmas away from the fabric of America.

If there were, I certainly would have gotten the memo.

I’ve checked all my e-mails, letters, phone messages — nope, no conspiracy this year.

Isn’t all this just a bit ridiculous?

"There is no war against Christmas," said ordained minister Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "There is no jihad against Christians. There is nothing going on around Christmas except these (conservative) groups’ incessant fund-raising."

The whole Merry Christmas paranoia isn’t about the American Civil Liberties Union or Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which quite properly strive to keep organized religious displays away from classrooms and public property.

No, this is just about folks in America being nice.

That’s really all it is.

When my kids were little, just about every year we would encounter someone at a supermarket checkout counter or in a store or a park who would smile kindly and ask what they hoped Santa would bring them.

Those people were just trying to be nice, and they were assuming that everybody celebrates Christmas. Considering more than eight in 10 Americans are Christians, that’s not a wholly unreasonable assumption.

A lot of Jews do celebrate Christmas, at least in some form. Our family doesn’t. My children knew there weren’t going to be presents under a tree, or, for that matter, a tree in the house.

As far as I could tell, they never felt deprived, just a little uncomfortable. They never quite knew what to tell the nice person who asked what they were getting for Christmas without seeming rude or hurting their feelings.

We live in what seems to be an increasingly diverse world. You never know whether the next person you meet will be a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, atheist or who knows what else.

People will almost invariably be nice once they realize they could hurt someone’s feelings, particularly a child’s, so they play it safe by saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas."

Store employees tend to say, "have a good holiday," as they send you off with your purchases. But despite the fulminating to the contrary by Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly (whose column appears each Monday in this newspaper) and others, there have been no confirmed reports of any major chain of stores forbidding its people to say "Merry Christmas."

C’mon, do you really think there’s any danger of Christmas going away? If you have any concerns, I wish you could walk around for just one day with one of those clicker devices coaches use to count pitches in a baseball game.

Select any day over the next three weeks and click every time you see or hear a reference to Christmas. I’m talking about signs, commercials, songs on the radio, store windows, conversation, etc.

Don’t be surprised at the end of the day when you have used that clicker hundreds of times.

Please don’t think that just because I don’t celebrate Christmas I don’t think it’s a warm, beautiful — and yes — precious holiday. It is all that and so much more. I think most non-Christians believe the same thing.

By the way, did you know the Christmas tunes "O Holy Night," "White Christmas," "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," "Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree," "A Holly, Jolly Christmas," "We Need a Little Christmas," "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let it Snow," "Silver Bells" and "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts roasting on an open fire ...)" have one thing in common?

They were all written by Jews.

Have a very merry Christmas.

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Sam Pollak is editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at spollak@thedailystar.com or at (607) 432-1000, ext. 208.