More than any other time of the year, the Christmas season is supposed to bring warm thoughts and inspire us to help others. But despite all the Hallmark movies, this Christmas seems to be accentuating hatred locally and throughout the world.

News reports tell of animal abuse, assault based on religious beliefs and crimes not only targeting the elderly, but also popularized by hate groups on the Internet.

It’s hard to fathom two men — they are old enough to know better, so not fairly characterized as boys — thought it was OK to abuse a deer that had been crippled and make themselves look cool by posting it for other sick, demented individuals to watch. The Internet only made it worse by posting the garbage for them.

When will people learn clicks aren’t worth posting and sharing this trash?

Butler is facing an alleged hate crime as a man was badly beaten seemingly just because he is Jewish. It is doubtful the abuser knows much of anything about being Jewish, but instead knows there is something different about the Jewish man’s basic faith.

That is cause to beat a man and say cruel things?

And across our border in Beaver County, a story involving multiple cases of abuse against residents of a home for people with severe intellectual and physical disabilities includes a man from Cranberry Township as one of the alleged abusers.

These victims are among the most helpless of our society. They suffered this indignity and their alleged abusers had material they could post to the garbage websites that have similar low-life followers.

There is no room in this world for these animals.

How do these things happen and why? Are these the results of our changing society? Does it fall back to how these men were raised? How much blame lies within the institution where abuse takes place?

Unfortunately, hiring for these facilities is difficult as the work is hard, the hours long and the duties challenging. And while screening processes are often implemented, not every bad apple is caught in the process.

Even if one bad apple gets into these homes, it usually doesn’t have tragic results unless a second or additional problem hire takes place. So, some fault lies there.

Much like the sick, social media aspect involved with the McGuire Memorial case, no one has yet to offer explanations for the lousy excuse for “hunters” who abused a harmless and defenseless deer and posted it on Snapchat. They furthered their crime by claiming they had to resort to abusing the animal to end its suffering. Furthermore, no legitimate hunter goes into the woods without a knife to field-dress his game. The audio on the video doesn’t leave any question that they were enjoying their actions.

Blame for this can be shared with poor hunting training, lack of respect for hunting and most of all a total lack of character of the individuals. So really, they have no excuse.

The hate crime is probably the most closely related to the criminal’s place in society. People with such narrow beliefs and no tolerance for anyone else having a right to practice religion as they choose have learned it somewhere.

Was it their friends, the people they worked with or socialized with on the streets? Maybe a combination of those groups is possible. But even one person choosing violence to stop others from practicing freedom of religion or freedom from religion is one too many.

This needs to be dealt with severely and like-minded people need to know that while they too have a right to believe as they wish, violence against others for that opposition will not be tolerated.

Not now, not ever.