Christmas message for retailers

By Gail Besse
Special to the CFP

“I love this time of year - when the nation’s retailers fill my mailbox with catalogs wishing me a happy non-specified holiday!”

So begins a funny web video clip with serious advice about stores that purge the word Christmas from their advertising.

“Shutterfly tells me it’s ‘that time’ again, but never tells me exactly what time that might be,” narrator Stuart Shepard says on the Citizenlink Stoplight video. “I visit Old Navy online, but all I can find is the ‘holiday’ collection.” He sounds puzzled.

Shepard then gives the nation’s retailers a little message.

He smiles as he waves a $20 bill. “Here, let me speak your language,” he continues playfully, tossing “holiday” catalogs into a wastebasket as Christmas carols are heard in the background.

Shepard explains to retailers: “If you’re going to be making money off our holiday, we’d seriously love it if you’d just celebrate it with us. And if you can’t do that, at least show a little respect. Call it what it is: Christmas!”

Those retailers that do acknowledge the name of the holiday that falls on December 25 get Shepard’s attention – and money.

“When L.L. Bean offers to ‘make my Christmas brighter,’ suddenly I find myself in the mood to buy some thermal light ear warmers!” he jokes.

The two-minute video, posted at Citizenlink.org, is part of Focus on the Family Action’s “I Stand for Christmas” campaign. The Colorado-based group is mounting a nationwide grassroots challenge to the secularization of Christmas. Using the Internet and radio ads, Focus Action is harnessing the power of concerned Christian consumers.

The campaign features an online petition that politely asks retailers to at least acknowledge the word Christmas. “We hope you will ‘stand for Christmas’ with us and encourage the continued acknowledgement of this historic Christian observance in our culture,” Focus notes.

There’s also a shopping guide of “Christmas friendly” retailers and those that ignore Christmas in their advertising.

A similar shopping guide – dubbed “Naughty or Nice” – can be found at the American Family Association’s online action site at afa.net. While the Mississippi-based AFA doesn’t have a petition, it does provide E-mail addresses of the “naughty” stores, so offended consumers can lodge a quick complaint.

Additionally, AFA’s Project Merry Christmas (“the plan they can’t ban”) offers for sale buttons and glossy stickers that announce, “It’s OK to Say Merry Christmas!”

“Some might think simply wearing a button or displaying a sticker is a small thing,” Chairman Donald Wildmon notes, “but God can use small things to make a big point, and to create opportunities to share the Good News.

“Christians can take a stand and proclaim to our communities that Christmas is not just a winter holiday focused on materialism, but a ‘holy day’ when we celebrate the birth of our Savior.”

Focus on the Family’s statement: “This trend is part of a larger movement to purge Christian references from the public square. With more than 90 percent of Americans believing in and celebrating Christmas, we believe it’s time for the secularization of Christmas to end.”

The shopping lists compiled by both Christian groups differ somewhat in their criteria used and stores rated.

Focus on the Family reviewed promotional materials of 33 retailers. Eighteen score as “friendly” – they prominently acknowledge Christmas. Ten rate as “negligent” for their marginal use of the word, and five are “offensive,” having “apparently abandoned” any recognition of whose birth we’re celebrating with gifts.

The AFA’s list has only two categories: “for” and “against.” The 11 “against” (the naughty ones) either use the word Christmas sparingly or not at all. The 15 “for” (nice) retailers show an attempt to acknowledge Christmas on a regular basis.

Only six retailers – Lowe’s, Home Depot, Macy’s, Sears, Target and Wal-Mart – attained the best score on both lists. Both gave a bah-humbug to Old Navy/The Gap.

Meanwhile, the national Knights of Columbus is continuing its yearly “Keep Christ in Christmas” campaign, spokesman Peter Sonski said. The Catholic fraternal organization makes available Advent wreaths and religious cards, banners, ornaments, magnets, billboards and other evangelization materials that local councils can purchase.
“It’s a program that Knights across the country take advantage of,” Sonski said. “As with any volunteer group, how fervently it’s used varies from year to year depending on members.” Information can be found at ChristinChristmas.com.

It appears that consumer complaints do make an impact. In 2005 some retailers - Target, Sears, and Lowe’s among them - used only “holiday” in their marketing. The AFA organized a petition, and these stores and others now acknowledge Christmas.

And the City of Boston in 2005 had named its 48-foot spruce a holiday tree, but quickly redubbed it a Christmas tree after public outrage. In 2007, Lowe’s apologized for referring to Christmas trees as “family trees” in its holiday catalog. A spokeswoman called te use of the term “family trees” a “plain old error,” according to the New York-based Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, which issues a yearly report on the “Christmas Wars” in business, government and education.

But there are definitely stubborn holdouts. In response to a customer request this year to use the word Christmas, Costco Wholesale sent this email to a customer: “There are a number of holidays during November and December; our ads are in reference to all of the holidays. These holidays include Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa and New Year’s Eve.”

The customer replied, “Well, I hope you make profits off Veterans Day and Kwanzaa, as I won’t be doing my Christmas shopping there.”