PENTAGON — The Department of Defense announced on Wednesday that military members who served during the War on Christmas will now receive a medal in recognition of that service.
“At the urging of President Trump and Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have approved the War on Christmas medal for any active duty, reserve, or National Guard member who performed duties during War on Christmas operations, whether at home or abroad,” a Pentagon statement reads. Each military service branch would be responsible for determining eligibility and distributing awards, it added.
To receive the medal, officials said that service members must have served after the start of the war from January 2009 until President Donald Trump declared victory over the anti-Christmas forces shortly after his inauguration and ordered cessation of War on Christmas operations in 2017. In addition, troops must also have been under orders in support of Operation Enduring Blitzen.
Though Enduring Blitzen was a modern war success story in that it technically had no combat casualties, officials recently launched an investigation into whether a range of recently-reported service member health issues is related to high levels of exposure to “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” and Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
