This is nonsense only Christians could come up with.
Get this. The American Family Association (you know we’re in trouble right there) has initiated a boycott of the GAP and all of its offshoot companies because of this year’s GAP ad campaign which AFA says does not feature “Christmas” prominently enough among other holidays which are also mentioned. From their website:
Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic, the three stores owned by San Francisco-based Gap Inc., are being targeted by AFA in a limited two-month boycott over the company’s failure to use the word “Christmas” in its advertising to Christmas shoppers.
Gap has refused to use the word Christmas in its television commercials, newspaper ads and in-store promotions despite tens of thousands of consumer requests to recognize Christmas as well as repeated requests from AFA to do the same.
Here is one of the ads that these people are upset about. Please note that the first holiday mentioned is Christmas.
The lyrics, in case you missed them, are:
2,4,6,8, ’tis the time to liberate
go Christmas, go Hanukkah, go Kwanzaa, go Solstice
go classic tree, go plastic tree, go plant a tree, go without a tree
you 86 the rules
you do what just feels right
happy do-whatever-you-wantaka
and to all a cheery night!
This past Tuesday, AFA announced that their campaign has resulted in something of a victory. From Tuesday’s press release:
UPDATE – 11-24-09
Gap responds, boycott suspended. Your actions make a difference! Company says “pro-Christmas” ad to air this weekend.According to Bill Chandler, vice-president of Gap corporate communications, Gap’s Old Navy division will launch a new television commercial this weekend …which “has a very strong Christmas theme.” Chandler responded to AFA last Friday, after a poll showed 90% of AFA supporters wanted to continue the boycott as a result of Gap’s initial “holiday” ad that mingled Christmas with the pagan’s “Winter
Solstice” holiday.Gap says the new ad will include the popular Supermodelquins proudly cheering “Merry Christmas,” and features Christmas trees, lights and ornaments as well.
In good faith, AFA is suspending the Gap boycott until it has an opportunity to view the new commercial this weekend.
As a result of your dedicated actions, we believe Gap is beginning to realize that Christmas is not just another “holiday” and will begin to advertise in a way that is respectful to Christians and Christmas shoppers.
SuperModelquins chanting Merry Christmas! Amen! Our God is not mocked!
Hey, idiots. You complain on the one hand that Christ has been “taken out” of Christmas, and on the other you fight to have Christmas included “more prominently” in consumer advertising? Any Christian with a brain knows that the linking of Christmas with capitalism is precisely the problem, and the use of Christ to sell sweatshop products — indeed any product at all — is utterly blasphemous.
In fact, contrary to the stunning stupidity of those Christians who insist that putting Christ back into Christmas means putting Christmas back into our shopping malls, I have written to the GAP demanding that they STOP referring to Christmas in their commercials. You can do so too by contacting them at this email address. They can talk about “doing whatever you wantaka” all they want. Just leave Christ out of it.
“‘Tis the time to liberate” indeed. It’s time to liberate Christmas from capitalism and to liberate Christ from stupid Christians.
This has become a crazy sideshow. I know families that give their kids a little something on the feast of St. Nicholas and totally ignore the consumer Christmas extravanganza. My oldest is old enough (almost three) that we may have to make the distinction this year.
I have in the past supported the idea of boycotting stores that do not allow employees to say “Merry Christmas” because it might offend someone. If it’s Christmas, we can say so. I would never be offended if someone wished me well for a holiday I don’t celebrate.
That said, muzzling people because you think my religion is offensive is on a whole different plane from using my religion to beef up your bottom line. ‘Whatever you wantaka’ is not the spirit of the season – in the view of virtually every religious tradition.
Amazing. Christmas turned into “whatever-you-want-aka.”
But I am growing more towards your side, at least on Christmas. Christians need to be thinking about how to distinguish their practices from that of the capitalist spending orgy. The St. Nicholas celebration is a good way to start. Any other ideas? (other than not wasting tons of money on presents)
Michael, It is the loudest who are the dumbest and get the most attention. They have mutated the expression of our faith from its mystery of Love and Communion to a caricature of a skit from SNL.
The term spiritual narcissism comes to mind. I must go confess my rage with this stupidity so I can get out of their universe of dark unresolved hatred. It makes me sick and I do not want to spread the illness.
These fools have it exactly backwards. They should be protesting the linking of this consumerist excess with the “Christ Mass”, rather than saying the links aren’t strong enough. Yet again, the denizens of the right are trying to make the Incarnation subservient to the secular religion. This kind of thing used to be called blasphemy.
I’m gonna open a store called Chasm. It’ll be like the GAP, only way bigger.
(Demetri Martin)
Organizations with the word family in their names tend to be hideous. “Focus on the family”, to name just one. It’s also code for anti-gay. Even more caution is advisable when “family” is combined with “American”.
Thank God the boycott is over. Now we can go back to buying GAP products made by child and slave labor in Mainland China by people who would land in jail if they dared celebrated Christmas in view of the government or Party.
I have in the past supported the idea of boycotting stores that do not allow employees to say “Merry Christmas”
I’ve written to AFA expressing my interest in colaborating with them in protecting employee free speech rights. I have yet to get a response.
Minion:
How is this a disease particular to the right? I think most Christian Americans, regardless of their affiliation, have been guilty of too little resistance to the linking of Christmas with an orgy of spending.
Michael Denton: Yes, most american Christians have been guilty of linking Christianity with capitalism, but clearly the “culture war” mission of putting “Christ” back into Christmas (and back into the GAP) is a pet project of the Christian right.