During a recent holiday season, Master Sgt. Robert Allen was stationed in Iraq, far away from his wife back home. So, he wrote a song about how much he missed her and sent it to her on Christmas Eve. According to Allen, his wife Carla “balled her eyes out when she heard it.” This year, the marine’s overseas again, this time in Afghanistan. So, he’s recorded a video of the tune, “A Marine’s Christmas Song,” and posted it to YouTube where it can be seen by many people who can relate to its simple, heartbreaking lyrics.

We can only imagine that a number of other people will react to the song the same way Allen’s wife did.

Every December on The Factor, with his strong Christmas sense, Bill O’Reilly will kick off his Christmas defense. For the War Upon Christmas comes but once per year, and it fills the Fox hallways with holiday cheer. Today on his program, O’Reilly defended the holiday from secular-progressives who have fought hard to end it. O’Reilly declared, “for the last 15 years” he’s stood up for Christmas and all of its cheers.

Yesterday was not only a big day for consumers and retailers, it was also big for the ‘Occupy’ splinter movement Occupy Black Friday. The movement called for a boycott of all large chain stores to hit the 1% during a critical shopping season. There were several small protests around the country, but it’s unclear if the movement had any measurable success. Now that Black Friday is over, the anti-corporate protestors are focusing on the Christmas season to launch a new wave of protests.

Let’s be clear — we’re big fans of America’s Newsroom and its hosts, Martha MacCallum and Bill Hemmer. And we know in the frantic world of news some stupid, silly things get lost along the way. But a short, sweet, minor gaffe on the show this morning was just too good to pass up.

Last night marked the end of the season for Real Time, at least for the rest of the year. So given that Bill Maher wont be around for the holidays, he delivered his Christmas message early: a reminder to Republicans that Ebenezer Scrooge was actually supposed to be the bad guy in A Christmas Carol, not a role model.

You probably didn’t even know this was a “thing,” but, on Tuesday, the government announced that all fresh Christmas trees coming from farms that produce 500 trees or more would be subject to a 15-cent fee. The money — expected to be in the $2 million neighborhood — will go towards the marketing of…fresh Christmas trees. The U.S. Department of Agriculture will handle the funds in hopes of improving the perception of the trees through advertising campaigns and various related promotions. In other words, your balsam fir is about to get the “got milk” treatment.

A mansion in the country isn’t a bad place to spend Christmas, especially when you’re a restless, internationally alleged criminal whose most recent bed was in prison. As Newsweek reveals in its newly published photo exposé, Julian Assange spent his holiday season in a calm, relaxing, and at times adorable fashion.

Earlier this week, we told you about Sheriff Joe Arpaio‘s unique holiday plans, which included a caroling competition. Well, it finally has a winner: Jodi Arias, a woman currently awaiting trail for the alleged murder of her boyfriend, beat out some 50 other inmates for the contest’s top prize. And, it turns out, this isn’t her first brush with super-fame.

Recently, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon has become the place on network TV for great musical performances (take that, Glee!). When you’ve got The Roots there every single night, that shouldn’t be surprising. We’ve already brought you Fallon’s Blue Man Group-inspired “Little Drummer Boy” with Jack Black, but somehow we missed out on his rocking version o “Silver Bells” with none other than Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider! Fortunately, Christmas isn’t over and there’s still time!

‘Tis the season to be jolly, but ’tis also the season to fill dead news space. Luckily, you’re also probably looking for something to do after you sleep off the eggnog, glance nervously at your now-bone-dry tree, and try to remember if you really just paid twelve bucks to see Little Fockers. Whether you celebrate [...]

Maybe I’m just a 24 geek, but these Jack Bauer interrogation mashups never cease to amuse. And now–as the country is in the midst of a holiday terror scare, it seems Jack has got the prime suspect in a holding room at CTU…and, well, it’s getting ugly.

“Give me the names!” Bauer demands from the guy who claims he was flying without a passport because he’s “Santa.” And then the suspect spills: “Dasher, Dancer, Prancer…”

The New York Times has posted a truly great video about a real life Christmas story that’s more miraculous and heartwarming than half the movies on your TV. It tells the true story of a couple of men in New York who suddenly began receiving hundreds of letters at their door from children all across the city and all addressed to Santa Claus himself.

Why did Bret Baier pass out at midnight mass one Christmas? And how does a lollipop figure into Janice Dean‘s Santa Claus memory? My, oh my, the stories these Fox News correspondents and hosts have to share.

For those of you who don’t know Ke$ha, she’s a pop singer famous for the annoying spelling of her name, a ridiculously catchy single, and a poorly received SNL performance. Basically she’s less artsy than Lady Gaga, less blatantly sexual as Katy Perry, and slightly less likely to end up in rehab than Taylor Momsen. Anyway, she just posted a holiday video on her YouTube channel and it is…odd. Sure, it’s mostly just a blatant attempt to get attention but, it’s the holidays so we’ll give it to her. Merry Christmas, Ke$ha (cue “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”)!

Bill Maher, host of HBO‘s Real Time, and notorious religious nonbeliever, taped a harsh and hilarious “Christmas message” for his website that served as a damning critique of all Americans and of the one media figure most are too scared to attack: Oprah Winfrey. Calling Oprah’s “Favorite Things” episode “one of the most deeply disturbing things I’ve ever seen on television” was just the beginning of Maher’s memorably “cheerful” message.

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio is famous, to put it somewhat euphemistically, for thinking outside the pen when it comes to punishing his state’s criminals. Now the man who made headlines for making inmates don pink underwear is in the news yet again, this time for organizing a caroling contest among inmates, with the most angelic rendition of “All I Want for Christmas is You” winning a festive Christmas dinner.

On Sunday’s Inside Washington, NPR’s Nina Totenberg apologized for using the words “Christmas party” in a discussion about budgets. It’s unclear why she became as red in the face as the red Christmas flowers behind her when she mistakenly allowed the “offensive” words to escape from her lips. Yet she does regret that no alternative expression was available to describe the party she attended.

In an unforgettable train wreck segment on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, a distracted Erin Burnett, who appears to have just come from a Christmas gift exchange, explains that the gift she received from her CNBC co-host Mark Haines was a bra that doubles as a gas mask. And then she puts the bra on her face to demonstrate how it doubles as a gas mask. No, you can’t make this stuff up. Watch the (hysterical) video below.

For everyone who didn’t feel like spreading the message of state’s rights this holiday season with the Tea Party coloring book, but still wanted your kids to spend Christmas coloring people purple and adding in dinosaurs (or whatever the heck it is kids do with coloring books), the weekend hosts of Fox & Friends are presenting an alternative: The Atheist Christmas Coloring Book! Some of you are probably wondering how connecting atheism and Christmas could possibly make any sense. Well, just remember, it makes about as much sense as connecting atheism to Fox & Friends.

It seems like not many in Washington are embracing the holiday spirits, though in the most disturbing ways. To wit: the effort to paint Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as the Grinch who will steal Christmas did not sit well with Reid, and earlier today he hurled a few verbal lumps of coal in the direction of his Republican colleagues.

And The Twelve Days of Random, Online Christmas Videos continues unabated with a doozy from the folks over at Funny or Die. In it, Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly don wigs, Christmas sweaters, and terrible, terrible British accents to transform themselves into David Bowie and Bing Crosby so they can re-enact the unlikely pair’s performance of “Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy.”

Move over, Basil Marceaux. This is the best video you’ll see this holiday season. What begins as a truly sad story on Today about a family dealing with the loss of their husband and father in Afghanistan, turns heartwarming even before the big surprise the show’s producers had planned at the end. This is all thanks to little Keegan Roberts who couldn’t get enough of the big TV cameras and interrupted the proceedings for an impromptu dance performance.

If the jingling of sleigh bells and empty Faygo bottles are to be believed, the holiday season is upon us and that means it’s time to sit back and celebrate. What better way to do that then singing a jolly Christmas tune with one of 2010′s break out stars, the Tennessee Santa himself, Basil Marceaux? Heck, with this and that Alvin Greene Hanukkah album I’m planning on recording, this is going to be a truly magical season.

Chris Wallace has better things to talk about than whether a private institution chooses to put a Christmas tree in its lobby, much to the chagrin of radio host Mike Gallagher. The Fox News Sunday host visited his program on Friday in the hopes of discussing hard politics and, in being roped into discussing the “war on Christmas,” became irritated at Gallagher, debunking the claim that the holiday is under attack and becoming exasperated with the topic quickly.

It almost sounds right: A Dr. Who Christmas. Maybe because it sounds a lot like A Dr. Seuss Christmas. Or something.

But the Brits have decided to take their beloved-but-still-somewhat-confusing-to-Americans character, Dr. Who, and give him a good old fashioned holiday movie, based on the classic A Christmas Carol , written by Steven Moffat, creator of the recent Masterpiece Mystery hit Sherlock, and set to debut on BBC America on Christmas Day. Moffat described his sci-fi holiday mashup this way: