Posted on 11/19/2012 11:08:47 AM PST by Gopher Broke
Dear Friend,
As the Christmas shopping season begins full swing, AFA has prepared its annual "Naughty or Nice" retailer list.
We have taken the top 100 national retailers and reviewed their websites, media advertising and in-store signage in an effort to help you know which companies are Christmas-friendly.
Over the past seven years, your AFA has stood firm in the "War on Christmas." Companies who used to refuse to acknowledge Christmas now have Christmas "shops" inside their stores. Many of them now liberally use "Christmas" in their advertising and in-store signage. Sadly, there are still some companies which refuse to use "Christmas." They continue to insult and offend Christian shoppers by sticking with their politically correct "holiday" term.
Between a rock and a hard place... wasn’t it not all that long ago that the commercialization of Christmas was lamented by the devout crowd? Now, we consider that a lesser evil than being “sensitive” to non-Christians (who almost all in practice actually could not care less about Christmas trees, Christmas dinners, and the like, and were not at all bugged by them).
What?! No Christmassy tee shirts, bathing trunks, flip flops? Oh the huge manatee.
Maybe that’s how they celebrate it in Australia where it’s summer then.
How about a list of those involved in the war on Thanksgiving. You would think that retailers could pause for a mere 24 hours each year to allow us to be thankful for what we have before we set out to accumulate more.
Their signs isn’t the problem, some of these corporations have an anti-family/Christian agenda all year long.
hear, hear! i am with you on this... i don't really expect anyone to wish me a Merry Christmas on any day other than Christmas day... i like Happy Holidays... it fits with this season of several holidays... i also like Season's Greetings...
however, i absolutely do not accept holiday tree--it is Christmas tree... on the other hand, i am not at all offended by "Xmas" because i know the meaning of the symbol "X"... call me another Xian who has no problem with "Happy Holidays."
Many Jews have no problem with "Merry Christmas" in a country that is/was predominately Christian.
This reminds of a story about a man who opens a door to a building and stands aside to allow a lady to pass.
She looks at him and says, "You don't have to open the door for me because I'm a woman."
The man replies, "I don't open the door for you because you're a lady. I do it because I am a gentleman."
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a Christian wishing anyone a Merry Christmas. It identifies you as a Christian and since we are commanded in Matthew 5:16 to let our light shine to glorify our Father in heaven, go ahead.
Let your light shine. Merry Christmas.
It's the Christmas season. It's our culture. We exist, too, and the brainwashing involved in getting folks to think "Happy Holidays" is, imho, an "anti-Christian culture" initiative.
From Advent (anticipating the coming of the Lord) through Christmas (celebrating the coming of the Lord) is, given the year, in the neighborhood of 40 days long. It is always the 4 Sundays preceding Christmas and the 12 days of Christmas. It's been that way throughout our Christian culture for centuries.
Hannukah is an 8 days celebration based on a lunar calendar that could go from late November to early December. This year it's from the 8th-15th of December.
Is it the basis of all these traditions you see in our culture? Does it inform Santa Claus (St Nicholas), mangers, wise men, in any way whatsoever? No. It does not.
This cultural celebration is about Christmas. The traditions are founded in Christianity and the Christmas story.
Refusing to permit employees to say Merry Christmas, to have "holiday trees", holiday lights, holiday cards, and on an on is pure opposition to our Christian culture and an unwillingness to acknowledge our presence, all of which is part of a brain-washing program.
I think it is their version of making the Yuletide gay.
yeah isn’t there another song about that? (making the yuletide gay)
The balance of my existing Banana store card was $00.00. Clerk asked me if I wanted it reactivated(?). I said sure and, voila, a Visa card showed up in the mail a few weeks later. They cancelled the card but are still billing me for late charges over the purchases I made that day.
Most of their stuff sucks anyway.
This season of Christmas has been celebrated as such since this nation was founded. Now, this growing secular nation wants nothing to do with “Christ” in anything. Yes, this is a concerted attempt to remove him completely from our lives. It will NOT happen at our house. All the Christmas songs sung by secular artists had no problem with Christmas. I will NEVER refer to it as the “holidays”. It is a denial of our remembrance of the Christ child who came into the world, lived a sinless life, and died on a cross for the sins of the world. That fact is not a popular one in today’s secular culture but it’s still true and though the world wants to deny him, one day every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is LORD.
It was supposedly to make shops more inviting to people from cultures that don’t commonly celebrate Christmas.
I find it hard to be doctrinaire or dogmatic. Even those who ask clerks to keep “Merry Christmas” greetings to people they are pretty sure will appreciate it, can still have very obvious Christmas displays and pipe carols over their PA systems. A little common sense will go a long way.
There certainly was an American Christian contingent who felt the modern celebration of the Nativity to be too reminiscent of idolatry — and that was the glory of the religious freedom of the country, that they were perfectly welcome to refrain from things Christmas.
Cultures in America that don’t know Christmas is part of the larger American culture are extremely rare. I’d argue they’re non-existent. It’s like going to Germany and telling them to knock off the Christmas markets, there are Turks around.
Actually a lot of the traditions are from pagan cultures. You ever wonder why the tree chosen to celebrate a birth in the mid-east is a pine? Ever wonder what Yule is and why it has a log?
The simple fact of the matter is there’s good reasons to call it “the holiday season”, in between this Thursday and the Tuesday seven weeks from now there’s a whole bunch of holidays from multiple religions and secular life.
Even the gift buying, depending on who you know could have nothing to do with Christianity. Most of the folks on my shopping list are Jews and atheists. The only regular church goer on my list is the mother-in-law, and she’s not really even on my list, the wife shops for her. The wife and I like to decorate, but the decorations are geared towards pretty light, with a lot of pepper themes because we’re in the southwest and like peppers both in our belly and on your walls and fence. I buy holiday lights and send out holiday cards, I don’t do the tree thing though, holiday or otherwise.
Nobody is failing to acknowledge your presence. But maybe you should be acknowledging the presence of others. The percentage of folks who do Christmas the way you do is pretty small, you share the next 6 weeks with millions of people who don’t advent, and don’t really Christmas.
They may know but it still may not be gainful to virtually parrot “Merry Christmas” to them. I wouldn’t order my clerks to do that to a clientele of Lubavitcher Jews, for instance; they well know what Christmas is but the wish is utterly wasted.
At the moment, I’m more annoyed with companies that do harm to Thanksgiving by polluting a Christian holiday with greedy ads and sales.
It’s pine because it’s evergreen, and it goes back to 15th-16th century Christian Europe. The first tree with lights was by Martin Luther.
And the incidence of followers of Odin is a bit on the low side these days.
When they step forward in vast numbers, I’ll loan them a log. In the meantime, I’ll consign them to Marvel comics.
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