It was a tragic killing, the culmination of a tragic life. His friends called him Bob. He and his family lived in Texas.

He could never quite get it together financially. He found employment with a mortgage company, so it seemed things might be looking up. But Bob lost his job when real estate collapsed.

His wife was barely holding things down financially. Bob had never approved of her working. But her cosmetology license finally came in handy. She held two jobs. Last year, she and Bob separated.

He showed up at a Christmas morning family gathering dressed as Santa Claus and stayed a while. Then he pulled out two guns and shot everybody there. He killed his wife and their two teenaged children. Three relatives were visiting. They were his wife's sister, brother-in-law and niece. He killed them all.

It looks as if he planned to incriminate the murdered brother-in-law. One of the guns was placed in the dead man's hand. Perhaps Bob realized he couldn't pull it off.

The sequence is a little disjointed. Reports are still a little sketchy. Sometime during the shootings, police have a 911 call recorded. It's hard to make out much through the labored breathing, but investigators have used to special equipment to separate the noise. A voice is heard. "I am shooting people." In the background other voices seem to be calling for help.

Bob's last act was to kill himself.

The community is just northwest of Dallas. The mayor issued a statement.

This is obviously a terrible tragedy. The fact that it happened on Christmas makes it even more tragic. This appears to be a family situation and anyone who has a family will be incredibly saddened by that happened.

There are two additional facts that have some Christian activists talking.

• Bob was a Muslim. Bob was a nickname. His real name was Aziz Yazdanpanah.
• His 19 year old daughter, home from college, was dating non-Muslims.

Well, that would mean some sort of ritual honor killing, right?

It may strike some as grasping at anti-Islamic straws, excepting those who envision an honor killing ritual that involves Santa Claus, attempted framing of a relative, and suicide. Such details do not deter the fevered accusations of extremists, who see connections not obvious to the rest of us.

This comes from anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller, but it is representative of some on the Christian right.

The mainstream media has reported this as the "Santa killer." No mention that it was an Islamic honor killing until this Dallas Morning News story. Our daughters and granddaughters are going to be the ones who will suffer because of this obfuscation and excusal of barbarism.

Charles Johnson leads a bit of resistance to the attacks. "Same bigotry," he writes, "different day." He's right. So now he's becoming the center of attack.

It is a common human failing, I suppose, to ascribe every tragedy to characteristics of which we disapprove. Christian conservatives merely take that failing up a quantum level. Still, it is cringe worthy when, on occasion, hate talk is presented as representative of the Christian faith.

We mourn, of course, the tragic deaths of so many in a Texas family.

And, within the Christian family, we mourn those lost souls who substitute an ideology of hatred for the authentic message of the Prince of Peace.