Grand Rapids Press: "The phony 'war on Christmas' has begun" ... GRAND RAPIDS?

[Bozita]

You really don't want to miss the comments below the article.

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2009/11/the_phony_war_on_christmas_has.html

The phony 'war on Christmas' has begun
By Troy Reimink | The Grand Rapids Press
November 20, 2009, 10:00AM

Ah, it's that time of year again. City workers putting up Christmas decorations. Seasonal music piping through retail establishments. Secular humanists resuming their annual plot to dismantle the fabric of American society.

That's right, the annual war on Christmas -- or, rather, people screaming into megaphones about what they imagine to be a war on Christmas -- is under way.

The ungodliest of this year's combatants is the Gap, which offended the American Family Association by daring to run advertising that does not prominently feature the word Christmas.

So a boycott was called against the Gap and sister chains Old Navy and Banana Republic.

Writes the AFA's Buddy Smith:
"I've been perplexed, wondering why the culture would issue an all out frontal attack on the single most important event in all of human history. But that is exactly what has happened this year ...
"So for Gap, the real meaning of Christmas is inclusiveness. They don't understand that without Jesus Christ there is no Christmas. The culture spent years secularizing Christmas season and now some companies like Gap are ready to get rid of the word Christmas altogether. Thus, their war on Christmas has been revived this year."

A few days later, the Gap issued a new holiday ad that features a cloying group of young people engaging in a dance routine with a chant that mentions Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwaanza and the winter solstice. It ends: "Happy Whateveryouwannakah."

Maybe not exactly Clio Award material, but hey, it's just an ad, right? Nope, still not enough for the AFA, which decried it as "completely dismissive and disrespectful to those who celebrate the meaning and spirit of Christmas ...

"If this is Gap's answer to recognizing Christmas, we are deeply disappointed."

more ...

[Mari333]

1. good article

knr
looks like the trolls are out tho

[SpiralHawk]

2. And if this is the Republicon Fundies attempt to honor the Spirit of Christ

I am deeply disappointed.

[alfredo]

3. Makes me feel better about The Gap.

[abelenkpe]

4. When I was little

My pop, who was a big muckity muck at a large insurance company would send out holiday cards every year. I remember it was my job to stuff and stamp hundreds of cards that said sweet benign things like "Happy Holidays." The cards didn't say "Merry Christmas" I was told because the office was full of people of all faiths and no matter what one believes we are all really celebrating two holidays at this time of year considering New Years.

Today, my father is part of the wingnut set who claims this "happy holidaying" is part of an evil plot against Christmas.

I blame FAUX news.

[mrcheerful]

5. It's the west side of the state enough said. The west side like the yoopers

who consider themselves rugged pioneers because they have lots of snow in the winter, you know god's country? Sorry but after 53 years of michigan living I realized that certain areas of the state are stupid nit wits that think Engler was the second coming and they really miss all of the wonderful things Engler done for the state.

[Blue For You]

6. This is quite simple. The American Family Ass. is against a free market.

In this case, the Un-American Family Association wants to abridge the Gap by sticking Jesus Christ down everyone's throat. The free market doesn't need a bunch of religious busybodies interjecting their brand of theology onto consumers.

[Bozita]

9. Pick a corp. whose sales are likely to dip. Get offended. Mount a boycott. When numbers come in, ...

... declare victory.

It works every time.

[zbdent]

7. look for the reports of XMas 2009 sales being historically low as a

repudiation of their "boycott" ...

despite the fact that, across the board, spending on Xmas would be down no matter if the store had "Merry Christmas", "Happy Holidays", or nothing noting any type of "holiday" on display ...

[WCGreen]

8. I think that second Gap at was kind of cool...

At the very least, we now know what college cheerleaders do upon graduations.

[TalkingDog]

10. This has been my standard response to that crap

The yearly war on Christmas is upon us.

It’s time to voice our complaints about “holiday” advertisements, to start petitions proclaiming our outrage and to chain e-mail friends and acquaintances about which retailers to harass for not being “Religiously Correct” for excluding references to the upcoming Christian Holy Day

I seem to recall a time about 20 years ago, when the same people were wailing and gnashing their teeth about retailers debasing the holiest of days by using it to sell products and make money. “Commercializing Christmas” they called it. They started petitions proclaiming their outrage and called friends and acquaintances about which retailers to harass for not being “Religiously Correct”. They wrote letters to businesses demanding that the retailers, the Money Changers they called them, stop using Christmas to lead consumers into earlier and more elaborate shopping sprees; to stop belittling their faith by making money off the birth of their Lord.

This short attention span and lack of long-term memory makes it easy for religious leaders and conservatives to drag their oh-so-willing flock around by the nose; pushing them to disrupt one group of heathens here, feel terrorized by another there. It makes the political process in this country quite simple: keep the Christian masses riled up enough and they won’t notice or care about jobs disappearing, rampant inflation, shady bank deals that are putting millions out of their homes, lack of adequate health care and the recession we all know is here, but no one will admit. Their children aren’t being educated; heaven forbid they might learn evolution. And that they people they selected and elected to be moral and upright leaders are betraying their trust, taking their money and laughing all they way to the bank by way of their favorite drug dealers and gay “escorts”.

And even though United States is country predominately made up of those who claim to be Christians, somehow they feel put upon because their leaders constantly tell them that they are put upon. That makes them the 500-pound, easily led, easily angered, short-attention span gorilla in the room. Where does he sit? Where ever his handlers tell him to. The rest of us sigh and roll our eyes, knowing that soon enough they will have another upright and moral cause to distract him from the reality that they are being used and abused just so their handlers can have a little more power and stuff a little more money in their pockets

And that is truly what the War on Christmas is all about. Happy Holidays everybody.