Forget the Christmas decorations already beginning to pop up across the DC area's more tired-looking shopping centers. If you really want to announce to a Nation Divided(tm) that the holidays, with all their promise of hope and healing, are on their way, try something like this on for size:
I'm not particularly surprised that a coworker ran into something like this at a Cracker Barrel in quasisuburban Maryland (though I'm a bit more surprised that my coworker was inside a Cracker Barrel). What *does* surprise me is how many variations of this image pop up when Googling "confederate Santa," not to mention the specificity of the details. Turns out Mssr. Claus is a Colonel in the CSA, fully entitled to all the privileges and responsibilites that implies. (Who knows, perhaps his North Pole plantation wasn't sizeable enough to rate a General's commission.)
Kris Kringle: Another uniter, not a divider.