Posted on 11/09/2005 11:50:22 AM PST by big'ol_freeper
WAL-MART BANS CHRISTMAS:
BOYCOTT LAUNCHED
A woman who recently complained to Wal-Mart that the store was replacing “Merry Christmas” with “Happy Holidays” received an e-mail response from Customer Service. It appears below in its exact form:
“Walmart is a world wide organization and must remain conscious of this. The majority of the world still has different practices other than ‘christmas’ which is an ancient tradition that has its roots in Siberian shamanism. The colors associated with ‘christmas’ red and white are actually a representation of of the aminita mascera mushroom. Santa is also borrowed from the Caucuses, mistletoe from the Celts, yule log from the Goths, the time from the Visigoth and the tree from the worship of Baal. It is a wide wide world.”
To which Catholic League president Bill Donohue says: “This statement was signed by someone called Kirby. When I read it, I thought he might be drunk. But I was wrong. We sent Kirby’s response to Wal-Mart’s headquarters only to find that Dan Fogleman, Senior Manager, Public Relations, agrees. After acknowledging that he read Kirby’s response, Fogleman said, in part, the following”:
“As a retailer, we recognize some of our customers may be shopping for Chanukah or Kwanza gifts during this time of year and we certainly want these customers in our stores and to feel welcome, just as we do those buying for Christmas. As an employer, we recognize the significance of the Christmas holiday among our family of associates…and close our stores in observance, the only day during the year that we are closed.”
Bill Donohue says: “It’s nice to know that Wal-Mart is closed on a federal holiday. Now here is why I am asking the leaders of 126 religious organizations that span seven religious communities to boycott Wal-Mart. Go to its website and search for Hanukkah and up come 200 items. Click on Kwanzaa and up come 77. Click on Christmas, and here’s what you get: ‘We’ve brought you to our ‘Holiday’ page based on your search.’ In other words, Wal-Mart is practicing discrimination.”
And it is probably some kind of standard function programmed into their search engine - i.e. when a search returns an unmanageably HUGE number of results, suggest something more focused first, as a way of encouraging them to refine their search term a bit more. It doesn't happen when you search for "Christmas lights" or "Christmas tree" or "Christmas story" or...
Of all the things to get bent out of shape over. Sheesh!
Excellent point. Who searches for something with just "Christmas" anyway? Christmas what? What would you like? A tree? A nativity scene? Lights? Ornaments? Gifts? That's why they have the Holiday page with links down the side for common "Christmas" categories.
WalMart isn't this stupid.
> On the holiday page is a link saying "not what you are looking for click on the link to match your word Christmas. Click on the link and 7970 items to match Christmas. That's over 20 times as many as both of the others combined.
This fooferoo has the libs rubbing their hands and licking their lips with anti-corporatist joy. Listen, I have worked in the online retail industry and I can tell you that putting a shopper in the "Holiday" category from that search has nothing to do with discrimination (sheesh) and everything to do with directing the shopper to items that may not have "Christmas" in the title and may be nice things to buy for Hannukah and other holidays as well as Christmas.
And that so-called "letter" sounds like complete fiction to make a bogus case and create a media frenzy to preen in.
The query string "Christmas" was associated with the category "Holiday" because most Christmas items live in Holiday and most Holiday items are related to Christmas. It doesn't make sense for them to associate Kwanzaa with Holiday, since most results in Holday are not related to Kwanzaa. Kwanzaa has not been associated in the site administration (from what I gather this is a manual association) because redirecting Kwanzaa to Holiday is foolish: you will get LESS useful results. By associating Christmas with the category Holiday, you get all Holiday items that might not have Christmas in the name or description.
Paging Buffy...
Maybe there are people out there that just want to buy Christmas. Probably the same folks that call tech support asking how they can download the internet.
~laughing~ :~D
I'm amazed the greeting card industry let us get away with the "Happy Holdays" or "Season's Greetings" shortcut. This way, we only have to buy one card. :~D
I guess I need to go put on my waders.
All your base are belong to us!
Sols, your post 346 makes sense. Thank you.
Since the thread had almost 200 replies when I pung it out, I took the article at face value. It certainly pays to read all the thread first. I still haven't read it. So the entire article and emails were bogus, then. Well, when I have a time, I'll have to read the whole dang thing.
well, they do call that area southwest asia.
and the three kings....they brought some wontons
Last year I went out of my way to thank a local retailer for using the words CHRISTMAS TREES in her newspaper advertisement. She told me there was great pressure to use the words HOLIDAY TREE- but she decided that since the other people who were buying Christmas trees were people celebrating Christmas it would be appropriate. To think we live in an age when people have to stop and think about this stuff.
Didnt you know Wal-Mart created China! yep.
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