Keeping Christmas under wraps

defending the First Amendment against the Christian right ...

... because if Jews don't speak out, they'll think we don't mind

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Keeping Christmas under wraps

Op-ed, by Laura Billings, Pioneer-Press (St. Paul, Minnesota), November 12, 2006

The nation's big value retailers made headlines this election season by trying to sell their employees on the value of voting.

Arkansas-based Wal-Mart came out with a campaign to get its 1.3 million associates across the country to go to the polls. And here in our hometown, Target posted a voter's guide for its 330,000 employees that made some critics wonder whether that red bull's-eye was symbolic of some other affiliation.

So far, analysts haven't weighed in on what effect the Wal-Mart voters may have had in the midterm election, but Tuesday's Democratic tide may not have been the result hoped for by management types at both retailers, whose political action committees each gave more than 70 percent of their funding this cycle to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Now with that battle behind us, we can get back to the one that really counts -- the war on Christmas, a little-known Christian holiday celebrated on Dec. 25.

It's amazing the observance of this obscure holy day still survives after Target came out last season with a red-and-green marketing theme that said simply "Gather Round." Without explicitly using the word "Christmas," it was almost impossible for Target shoppers to tell whether the gold and silver ornaments filling the aisles were meant for a Christmas tree, or something else entirely. (Really big earrings, perhaps?)

Some shoppers were so confused that 500,000 of them signed an online petition from the American Family Association threatening to boycott the store, a threat that was withdrawn when Target sent a statement assuring the petitioners "you will see reference to Christmas in select television commercials, circulars and in-store signage....Christmas images and themes have been used in our advertising and marketing in the past and you will continue to see these images and themes in the future."

Hoping to get out ahead of these Christian soldiers in 2006, Wal-Mart made a bold move this week, announcing its intention to use the word "Christmas" liberally (or is it conservatively?) throughout its stores. According to the company's news release, Wal-Marts everywhere will feature "Days 'til Christmas" signs, Christmas carols will play, and the former Holiday Shop will be rechristened -- very cleverly, I might add -- the "Christmas Shop." They even promise that the amount of holiday merchandise that has been relabeled as Christmas merchandise is up "by over 60 percent from last year."

What a brave move for a retailer to make. Especially when a mere 96 percent of Americans actually celebrate Christmas.

No doubt this decision will be greeted as a victory by those who think that clerks who say "Happy Holidays" while waiting for authorization on your credit card in December was another sign of "secularists gone wild," as they like to say on Fox News. Bill O'Reilly will be pleased.

But for a lot of folks who celebrate this holiday, the problem has never been about getting the Christ back in Christmas -- it's getting the creep out of Christmas. That's the marketing term used to describe the advent of a Christmas season that now starts a few weeks before Halloween and lasts until well after return day on the 26th of December. That's probably more time than it took Mary to make it to Bethlehem, deliver the baby and get back her girlish figure.

If Target wants to get ahead of its competitor on this issue, it wouldn't have to pander -- all it would have to do is promise not to put a single tree-topper on display until we've all said our amens at Thanksgiving.

Putting Christ back in Christmas is fine. But putting Christmas back in December would be even better.

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