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crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters
Recently via One News Now came this news:
The American Family Association (AFA) is suspending its Christmas-season boycott of Gap, Old Navy, and Banana Republic.
The suspension of the boycott is in effect until at least Saturday. A Gap official has reported to the pro-family group that it will unveil a new Christmas-themed commercial this weekend. AFA says it is suspending the boycott “in good faith” until it has an opportunity to view the new commercial.
The boycott was initiated after the clothing company refused to use the word “Christmas” in its ads and promotions. Also, some people were upset over a Gap television ad that mentioned a host of other holiday traditions along with Christmas.
Buddy Smith, a spokesman for AFA, believes the boycott has had an impact. “Our supporters here sent emails, made phone calls, wrote letters, and expressed their concern — and so obviously GAP got the message,” he explains.
It's amazing how the article tries to sugarcoat the fact that the AFA originally started the boycott because it felt that GAP wasn't using the word “Christmas” in its promotions.
From ThinkProgress.org, this is what the AFA originally said:
For years, 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 and in spite of repeated requests from AFA to do the same.
Last year, Gap issued this politically-correct statement to Christmas shoppers: “Gap recognizes that many traditions are celebrated throughout this season and we feel it is important to display holiday signage that is inclusive to everyone.”
Christmas is special because of Jesus. It’s not just a “winter holiday.” For millions of Americans the giving and receiving of gifts is in honor of the One who gave Himself. For the Gap to pretend that isn’t the foundation of the Christmas season is political correctness at best and religious bigotry at worst.
The link goes on to expose just how mistaken the AFA was in its assessment of the situation:
AFA’s first shot in the war is a misfire, as Dan Neil of the LA Times points out today. In one of the first lines of Gap’s new holiday ad, the actors yell, “Go Christmas!” (as well as “Go Hanukkah! Go Kwanzaa! Go Solstice!”)
The link even shows the commercial:
Now that the AFA has a little egg on its face, the organization is trying to wipe it away under everyone's noses.
The sentence in the One News Now article – Also, some people were upset over a Gap television ad that mentioned a host of other holiday traditions along with Christmas – seems to be an inaccurate reconstruction of why the boycott was started.
Of course the Christian thing to do would be for the AFA to just admit its mistake.
But as we have seen in so other many cases, while the AFA talks about Christian values, it doesn't know the first thing about upholding them.
However it is nice to note that while everyone else settled down to eat turkey this Thanksgiving, the AFA dined on crow.
17 Comments
The only thing Christmas…has to do with Jesus is in namesake. Any time a religion takes over another it must keep some of the old holidays to placate the masses. ”Christmas” was well around before Jesus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C…
Ahhh Religion…how wonderful it is to take over the world and slow progress down in order to maintain a status quo of fear and pedophilia.
More proof thst Christianist Dominionists are not “Christian” at allReal Christians get annoyed at the commercialization of Christmas into an annual spending spree orgy spurred on by merchandisers tying their product placements. No one really knows the day of the year, or even the exact year, that Christ was born. The date was not important to early Christians, who did not even celebrate it.
The fake Christians at the AFA, who are really ChristianISTS who sugar-coat their bigotry by wrapping it in a perversion of Christian thinking, are so busy trying to cement the idea that the United States is a “Christian Nation” by getting incensed over the whole “Happy Holidays” v. “Merry Christmas” greeting thing, and boycotting merchandisers who don’t pervert the real meaning of Christmas the way the AFA does.
The AFA is as usual confused about what Chriatianity actually is all about. Their goal is to establish a Christianist theocracy with the civil law giving way to a “Christianist” law that will make Islamic Shariah look pale by comparison. I’d think they are hoarding stones just waiting for the day they can start stoning “abominations.”
Think of the children who might look at the dancing…Come on…these people are dancing in this commercial. Dancing to a Jebus holiday no less…where’s the uproar from the Baptists? I want to see SBC condemn this ad because of the hedonistic dancing. Someone might get an erection from the rubbing and closeness.
I would appreciate more consistency from the Righteous.
Just take a look at the news coverage of ChristmasEvery story–every single one–is about holiday spending, sales figures, crowds at Walmart, and on and on. Our media recognize (implicitly–I doubt if they’d ever say it, for fear of more backlash from whining Christian halfwits, who have to have everything be about them) that this is a commercial holiday, not really a religious one at all. And it always has been.
Thanks!Very interesting – never thought of this … well, maybe I should have due to the surprising coincidence of winter solstice and christmas on the same day…
Christmas = CapitalismAny other interpretation of the so-called holiday season is an affront to all the child rape enablers.
We must remember that xmas is about love for jesus and that love must be shown by spending money and going into debt and regularly and as deeply as possible.
If you don’t participate then you obviously are a godless socialist that is NOT going to spend the afterlife in heaven with all the clergy cornholing angels for eternity.
Choose wisely – with your credit card in hand, heathen.
Margaret Hamilton was right: ”What a world!”
“Real Christians get annoyed at the commercialization of Christmas into an annual spending spree orgy spurred on by merchandisers tying their product placements.”
Which “real Christians” are those? The pattern every single year is that Christian clergy are hugely concerned over commercialization of contemporary life — for about six weeks at the end of every year. After December 26th, it gets put on the shelf along with the Christmas wrapping.
Or put it another way: from New Year’s Day to Thanksgiving, how many sermons are preached weekly about the corrupting and corrosive effects of unqualified materialism on American life and the West in general? And how many get preached about their god’s mandate to see that women can’t get abortions, gay couples can’t get married and health care remains secure in the hands of insurance companies?
“it will unveil a new Christmas-themed commercial this weekend”Give me a break.
Television commercials for national retail chains aren’t produced all that quickly; it isn’t a matter of returning to Mom and Dad’s garage and throwing together another homemade video of your friends doing a dance routine. Chances are the second GAP commercial was in the pipeline when the AFA announced yet another boycott.
advent sunday is tomorrowthe AFA should boycott firms and stores who use christmas to sell their products before then. except, it’s all about money.
Actually I notice alot of new commercialsusing “Christmas” in its ads. I thought it was dumb and ridiculous to omit the word in these ads, given that they usually featured Santa Claus and other Christmas themes. Use the damn word and be done with it. And while it has very little to do with Jesus, it’s a national holiday that everyone has off. That’s just a fact. Use the damn word.
Bucky KattI can’t help but think of Bucky Katt each time I read about these people: Utterly self-absorbed, essentially ignorant of the issue, and never wiser for being thwarted. (Not to mention completely anti-social.)
Sorry Bucky.
Hugging = You Catch Teh Gay, Get Horny, Or SomethingJust in time for Christmas: a “christian” message in gangsta-rap form…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
I didn’t know hugging was so bad! But this is coming from the people whose men bitch about teh gays before trolling rest-stops for dick.
We should call it something differentThis is why I call the time to think about Jesus’ life and gifts to us as Christmas, and the capitalistic, unnecessarily stressful time as X-mas. I know that no one else calls it this, but it makes me feel a whole lot better.
Here’s what Christmas is all aboutPuppies opening presents!
Here’s what Christmas is all aboutPuppies opening presents!
Family asking what I want. I saida check to my favorite charity. When they ask me what that is, I will say my surgery fund. Besides a SMALL gift exchange, we celebrate solstice.
That’s lovely, but…Personally, I think that they should hold off on using the whole Christmas theme until it is the next holiday.
I have no objection to merchants convincing people to spend money at their stores for the single most commercial holiday of the year. I just get tired of Christmas music, decor, and non-stop commercials overwhelming other holidays.
Thanksgiving is well on its way to becoming a chance for families to exchange Christmas lists and carbo-load for the Christmas shopping that starts the next day (though our are had a lot of “Pre-Black Friday” sales on Thanksgiving itself, so Thanksgiving’s days are numbered.
But in our area, many stores had their Christmas stuff up before Halloween, and a lot of the Halloween decorations were identical to Christmas decorations, but in different colors (orange icicle lights, jack-o-lanterns stacked into snowmen, etc.)
We’re at friggin WAR, and Veterans’s Day disappeared this year.
I love Christmas. I celebrate Christmas. But it is, in my mind, supposed to be a 12 day celebration starting Christmas Eve and ending January 6. I don’t want to start celebrating it in August.
I HATE that these assholes make me tired of Christmas by mid-December.