Feeling lucky enough to have obtained an advance copy of Sarah Palin’s unreleased latest work, “A Happy Holiday IS a Merry Christmas,” and feeling strongly about the war in Syria and the war on Christmas, I feel it best to address the author directly with my review.

Miss Sarah Palin, being that we are both survivors of war, I feel we have so much in common. We both know the dark reality of what humanity is capable of. I have seen bodies so beaten and broken that I’ve mistaken them for trash on the street. You have had to endure people saying, “Happy Holidays,” instead of “Merry Christmas.” Tomato, tomat-oh, for these are both truly gruesome discoveries that continue to horrify us.

But it appears that I am digressing. Let us talk about your book and your war, because to simply compare casualties (over 70,000 dead in Syria, to nobody having ever died in your War on Christmas) would be to trivialize both of our experiences. Likewise, I’m not going to question that you know what the word “war” means. You know what a war is, I know what a war is, let’s move on.

The Nativity scene, a staple among the Christian faith since 1223. I love how passionately you fight for this tradition. However, I’m not completely familiar with your use of the phrase “liberal elite.” Nonetheless, you do a fantastic job of painting this horrendous gang as godless, immoral, hate-filled, without joy and living in or near Hollywood. I know a few things about Hollywood, so I am not shocked that the same entity that created “The Smurfs” movie would take pleasure in censoring what basically amounts to happiness and free expression.

It seems that your outrage stems from the blatancy of these attacks on your holiday . It’s almost as if someone has taken Christmas to a small river, tied Christmas’ shaking hands and placed a gun to Christmas’ head, right before executing Christmas. I know how repugnant an act that is since it happened in my country to over 65 young men in Aleppo. The perpetrators of that atrocity were using human life to make a point, and I am sorry to hear your Christmas has received similar treatment by these “politically correct Scrooges.” Indeed, I hope to never meet the Scrooges who killed those young men next to a small river in Aleppo.

You also speak of this war’s effect on children. I believe no matter what side one finds himself on, the untouchable innocence of youth should always be protected. Likewise, denying a child the ability to pray and celebrate Christmas in school, as you have convinced me is being done in your country, is going too far. To steal that moment of exchanging presents with friends—who would do a such a thing? Speaking of stealing, did you hear, Sarah Palin, that children in Syria are having their childhood stolen from them and are being used as soldiers? It would seem that in both our countries, adults are victimizing our sons and daughters with their misguided beliefs. Your red man in a suit is being tortured just as much as our children, who are being forced to wear suits that inevitably turn red with blood.

Perhaps worst of all, you, Sarah Palin, feel like an outsider in your country, unwanted because of your kindhearted appeals for a better world – appeals that are as intelligent as they are plainly spoken with unyielding folksiness. Being a refugee, I know this heartache.

Again, it is insulting to compare us, for you, Sarah Palin, have chosen to stay in America and decry your country’s war, recording it in chapter after most definitely not ghostwritten chapter. I, on the other side of the coin, felt as though I must escape in order to save my life. Along with over one million of my countrymen, I have fled the war zone our Syria has become.

While I do not believe I am a coward for this act, you, who choose to remain in the thick of your war—you are a showcase in courage. You call yourself a “mama grizzly?” No, you are not. You are a whole pack of bears. Bears who have not claws, but words. Who have not teeth, but tenacity.

For its integrity, for its willingness to stand on a topic so divisive as to warrant being called “a war,” I say to you, Sarah Palin – one shell-scarred individual to another – congratulations on this achievement. The length of your prose was made shorter by the fire with which you inscribed each page. I loved this book more than “Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel: A Guide to Outwitting Your Boss, Your Coworkers, and the Other Pants-Wearing Ferrets in Your Life” by Scott Adams. And I adore Dilbert.

5 out of 5 stars