The Brights are feeling the holiday spirit. As the Telegraph reports, "American Atheists launch provocative campaign in religious Deep South":

Atheist activists are taking their campaigns to the Bible Belt this Christmas with a provocative billboard campaign that is expected to stir controversy in America’s religious heartlands.

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.

"Today’s adults have no obligation to pretend to believe the lies their parents believed. It’s OK to admit that your parents were wrong about God, and it’s definitely OK to tell your children the truth," said David Silverman, the group’s president, as he launched the campaign.

In a sign of the hostility the adverts are expected to generate, American Atheists said that it had failed to secure a single billboard site in Jackson, Mississippi after leasing companies collectively refused to offer space, fearing a community backlash.

I suspect the reluctance of billboard companies to offer space to the atheist elves is due less to fear of community backlash than concern about traffic accidents when the good folks of Mississippi burst out laughing while driving.

Here’s a suggested caption for a Christmas billboard, right next to the atheist one:

Dear Atheist Santa, What I want for Christmas is an explanation. All of my Christmas gifts are designed and are given to me by someone who loves me. None of my Christmas gifts happen by themselves. So why am I wrong to believe that my life is a much bigger gift, which is given to me by Someone who loves me, too?

Image credit: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Europe District/Flickr.