That wonderful christo-fascist organization, Focus on the Family, recently published a Christmas-Friendly Shopping Guide, which is based on the responses of 33 retailers to a letter the FoF sent to them in April 2007. Yes, you read that correctly. FoF wrote to 33 major retailers 7 months ago and advised them on the wording they should use in their Christmas advertisements. As of November 19, 2008, FoF’s ratings of retailers is as follows:
Focus on the Family Action’s 2008 Christmas-Friendly Shopping Guide
How leading retailers’ messages rate
Last updated: 11/19/08We welcome your use of these ratings in your shopping decisions. As an additional way to help you communicate with the retailers we evaluated, we are providing the convenience of a petition which you can sign by visiting focuspetitions.com.
Retailers will be presented with petitions — thanking those that embrace “Christmas,” and alerting those that have purged or marginalized “Christmas” that you object to the secularization of Christmas. We hope you will “stand for Christmas” with us and encourage the continued acknowledgement of this historic Christian observance in our culture.
“Christmas-friendly” retailers — prominent acknowledgment of “Christmas”
Cabela’s
Crate&Barrel
Dillard’s
Eddie Bauer
JCPenney
Kohl’s
L.L.Bean
Lands’ End
Linens ‘n Things
Lowe’s
Macy’s
Neiman Marcus
Nordstrom
Pier 1 Imports
Sears
The Home Depot
Target
Toys “R” Us
Wal-Mart“Christmas-negligent” retailers — marginalized use of “Christmas”
Barnes & Noble
Bed, Bath & Beyond
Best Buy
Borders
Circuit City
Dick’s Sporting Goods
GAP
KB Toys
Kmart“Christmas-offensive” retailers — apparent abandonment of “Christmas”
American Eagle
Banana Republic
Bloomingdale’s
Lane Bryant
Old NavyThis publication may be reproduced in its entirety only, and for non-commercial purposes, without prior permission from Focus on the Family Action. Copyright © 2008 Focus on the Family Action. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Printed in the U.S.A.
If reproducing, please cite as follows:
Originally published by Focus on the Family Action. Copyright © 2008 Focus on the Family Action.
You can probably guess how I’ll be using this guide. First, I will patronize, as much as possible, those retailers who are rated as either Christmas-negligent or Christmas-offensive. Second, I will refuse to patronize, as much as practicable, those businesses that caved in to the christo-fascists and received a Christmas-friendly rating. Third, over the next 3-4 weeks, I will contact these companies and inform them why I decided to do business with them, or not, as the case may be. It’s obvious that the companies that acquiesced to the FoF’s demands decided that there’s more money to be made by catering to them than by offending them. I, for one, want to let them know that there are financial costs to bending to the will of narrow-minded right-wing Christian blackmailers. This is not just an atheist issue: the FoF’s pressure tactics should offend moderate and liberal Christians and believers of other faiths just as much as they offend nonbelievers. I’m going to stand up for myself, verbally and with my wallet. What are you going to do?
– the chaplain
Posted by Sean the Blogonaut on November 30, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Wouldn’t shop at walmart anyway
Posted by Maria on November 30, 2008 at 10:56 pm
The way I see it, FoF is just working against itself. When retailers emphasize Christmas as a reason to buy, they are secularizing the holiday, making it more of a corporate event than a religious one. Either way I still don’t like the holiday, but it is an amusing piece of irony that we have here.
Posted by The Ridger on November 30, 2008 at 11:30 pm
FoF should be working to keep Christmas out of the hands of merchants. However, you are making an unwarranted assumption when you say the “Christmas-friendly” group “caved in to the christo-fascists”: it’s entirely possible that those letters had nothing to do with their choice to emphasize the word “Christmas”. Macy’s, for instance, IS Christmas and has been for a long time. Penney’s has lots of “Christmas” in their on-line store, but virtually nothing is religious and they’ve got a lot of “holiday” stuff.
I’m just saying, I want more than FoF’s list to make my choice.
Posted by Digital Dame on November 30, 2008 at 11:31 pm
What I don’t get is why FotF felt the need to do this in the first place. The stores are full of obviously Christmas-oriented merchandise in the form of decorations, fake trees, Christmas cards, etc., etc. Their level of paranoia that they are somehow being persecuted into non-existence just baffles me. I can imagine them telling their followers to go out like walking spybots and check up on the companies who caved to make sure there are enough mentions of “Christmas” to satisfy them, or scurrying back to report on the disloyal traitors who somehow fall short.
Posted by Laurie on December 1, 2008 at 12:05 am
American Eagle, Banana Republic, and Old Navy just don’t carry anything I like, although my recently born again step-daughter loves Old Navy – Ssshhhh. Bloomingdales? Yeah right. I’m a state worker. But fortunately (or unfortunately, actually) I have recently moved into Lane Bryant sizes…
My husband says that Linens n Things is going out of business. Maybe there is a god!
Wait, what? I can’t go to Lowe’s OR Home Depot? @#$#%.
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Posted by athinkingman on December 1, 2008 at 5:16 am
This is really dreadful. If you swap ‘Christian’ for ‘Muslim’ it would feel a bit like you were living in an oppressive, controlling Islamic state. I feel angry that FoF are doing this. Thank goodness Obama got in. Can you imagine how big FoF would think its muscles were if the election had gone the other way!
I had an email from a friend the other day complaining that in the UK, the Post Office is issuing stamps with non-religious pictures on this year, exhorting me to complain and make a point of asking for religious Christmas stamps. I pointed out that Christians had hi-jacked an existing festival and that Christians don’t own Christmas (even if they do kind of own the name).
I looks like Xmas is following abortion in becoming another litmus test of evangelical orthodoxy. What a tragedy! What a bore! What arrogance!
Posted by PhillyChief on December 1, 2008 at 9:57 am
FotF, like other Christian nutters, see it as some frightening evil to say anything other than “Christmas” or “Merry Christmas” during this time of year. Although stores may be decked out in what we generally refer to as Christmas crap, they may refer to it as “Holiday decorations” or greet people with such blasphemies as “Seasons Greetings” or “Happy Holidays”, which of course is a sign of the End Times (I just made that up, but I’m sure some Christians somewhere have already connected the dots for this argument).
Of course the worst thing is writing “X-mas”. Every time someone does that, Baby Jesus cries.
Btw, only one person died at the hands of stampeding shoppers at Walmart who know doubt were filled with Christmas excitement to shop during Walmart’s massive Christmas sale on Black Friday. Clearly that’s a Christmas miracle, as is the high sales volume across the country for that day, since low retail sales and a failing stock market also makes Baby Jesus cry, I think (he’s very temperamental).
Posted by PhillyChief on December 1, 2008 at 9:58 am
“no doubt”
Posted by the chaplain on December 1, 2008 at 10:12 am
Sean – good decision.
Maria – I agree with you, but the FoF is pretty myopic, to say the least.
Ridger – you’re right, I probably painted the picture with too broad a brush. No doubt, many (if not all) of the stores on that list were going to market Christmas simply because they calculated that such an approach would yield the maximum income for themselves. The thing is, the FoF twists the retailers’ intentions by representing their decision as an “embracing” of Christmas. It’s not an “embracing” of the Christian holiday, it’s the exploitation of a commercial season. I’ll probably modify my approach to those retailers to encourage them to be more inclusive in the future. There’s no good reason why this festive season can’t include Christmas and other observances.
Digital Dame – the FoF’s reasoning defies logic.
Laurie – your dilemma sounds a lot like mine.
ThinkingMan – It looks like Xmas is following abortion in becoming another litmus test of evangelical orthodoxy. What a tragedy! What a bore! What arrogance!
You took the words right out of my mouth.
Philly – I’m not sure who holds first place in creating the bogus War on Christmas, FoF or Bill O’Reilly. It’s a tough call.
Posted by bitchspot on December 1, 2008 at 11:46 am
I couldn’t care less if a store says “Merry Christmas” or not, Christmas has been a secular holiday for so long, the word has lost any inherent religious meaning whatsoever. As someone else pointed out, choosing to go to a store solely because they utter a few religious-sounding syllables is really idiotic, maybe some of these Bible-thumpers need to actually act like Christians instead of being worried about stores that pay lip service, supposedly, to Christianity.
Posted by Spanish Inquisitor on December 1, 2008 at 12:01 pm
I hate to be the curmudgeon here, but I’m going to shop, if I shop, anywhere I damn well please, and I really don’t give a rat’s patootie which store caved to the wing nuts and which didn’t. If they say Merry Christmas, or Merry Xmas, or Happy Holidays, I’m going to say Bah Humbug, just give me my discount” to all of them. It’s bad enough to know they’re ripping me off, and their CEO is getting a huge Xmas bonus to boot, so why do I care what they SAY to me?
I also feel that if I get sucked into this phony war on Xmas, from either side, I’m giving credibility to the war itself, which doesn’t exist other than as a flash point to extract contributions for the Christian wing nuts like Dobson.
Best thing to do is to ignore it as if it isn’t there, which it isn’t.
Posted by Ric on December 1, 2008 at 12:49 pm
I’ve answered your stirring call to take action. This morning I burned a crate in a barrel with some pennies and old linen imports to target the walls the christians erect to mark us.
On the other hand I don’t buy anything for anyone anyway. ‘Cept for me, of course, because I’m worth every penny I spend on myself. Christmas is a total bullshit guilt trip forced on us by corporate greed and religious freaks.
I will, of course, be expecting presents from all you guys…
Posted by the chaplain on December 1, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Bitchspot – I don’t care how store clerks greet me either. I usually return a Merry Christmas or a Happy Holidays, whichever is proffered, without giving it any thought.
SI – no comment thread at the chapel would be complete without at least one curmudgeon.
We both know that the merchants involved probably won’t be able to tell much difference between your inaction and my action anyway. I don’t really care about the bogus War on Christmas – I like Christmas and don’t want to fight for or against it. I’m just sick of self-righteous idiots acting like they own the season and telling the rest of us how to celebrate it.
Ric: I’m glad you took some action – I think. I’m not sure what to buy for a cat-loving misanthrope who seems to have everything.
Posted by bitchspot on December 1, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Chappy – I don’t either, I’ll wish anyone almost anything they want, I think I’ve even wished someone Happy Kwanzaa once, it’s just words anyhow. The one thing I don’t do though is pretend to placate anyone with religious drivel, if I’m in a bad mood and someone, especially some simpleton with a bell, starts telling me God loves me, I’m going to go off. I had some loser with a money box and religious literature get mad at me once because I didn’t put change in his box and I told him the one thing I will never do is give money to any organization that uses human suffering as a foot in the door to proselytize. That shut him up.
Posted by Ric on December 1, 2008 at 6:33 pm
chappie -
I’m in the market for a cat-loving girlfriend who is not a misanthrope. Us misanthropes need all the love we can get.
Posted by Sean the Blogonaut on December 1, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Tee hee, SI said patootie.
Posted by the chaplain on December 1, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Tee hee, SI said patootie.
Please accept my apology for for the rapidly degenerating language standards on this blog.
Posted by Digital Dame on December 1, 2008 at 10:38 pm
I seem to recall a gambling issue awhile back as well… my, my, what next?
Posted by Sean the Blogonaut on December 2, 2008 at 12:05 am
I just want to hear him say it on the podcast. It’s so quaint
Posted by Lorena on December 2, 2008 at 1:18 am
And to think that up to 4 years ago, I gave those wackos a monthly donation. And they keep calling, too, asking if I want to give them more money.
Posted by Sarge on December 2, 2008 at 8:22 am
My wife, who works in one of the retailers, remembers the time a couple years ago when the big whoop-de-do was going on. She is a methodist church goer, we’ve been married over forty years.
Her contention is that these people are simply looking for a fight.
That year, since we have a very large islamic and hindu population, they were instructed to simply say, “happy holidays” as appropriate. It is a holiday season, more cultural than religious (according to the store manager) and he felt that this was inclusive to everyone no matter what your background.
Wife says that the non-christians generally responded in kind with a smile, just politeness and business. The problem came with the christians, the fundegelicals.
They came in the store angry, looking to start up. So, the manager said, we’ll accomodate them, too. Someone brought in a rather large print of a renaissance nativity, they borrowed some of my CD’s of christmas music…still didn’t work.
It turns out they were upset about the commercialisation of the holiday, my Chantecleer CD was criticised because someone found out the group was from San Francisco and thus must be gay and so was a blasphemy, and the painting showed the baby jesus’s weiner and was thus also hopelessly unacceptable. Then there was the bunch who were against giving gifts at all and made their philosophy known at high volume and emotion.
It’s a “be reasonable, do it MY way” sort of thing.
Posted by Minneapolis artist on December 2, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Interesting. First post I read from you, not what I expected, but good.
Posted by the chaplain on December 2, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Digital Dame – gambling, obscenity…we see it all here.
Sean – you’ll have to stay tuned to the podcast; maybe it will be in the outtakes.
Lorena – we may have donated money to them (a long time ago) too. At least it was tax deductible, I think.
Sarge – there really is no pleasing these people, except by, as you noted, doing things exactly their way.
Posted by Reluctant Blogger on December 3, 2008 at 5:30 am
Oooh yes, I would do as you are doing and avoid those shops that have decided to give in to the demands of this organisation. Most of them don’t exist in the UK and I would never shop at Toys R Us anyway – foul and horrible shop!
I would take that viewpoint even if I agreed with the policies and ethos of the organisation which was lobbying.
I am not a great fan of Christmas. I think it brings out the worst in the majority of us and makes a lot of people feel sad and lonely.
Posted by Lisa Authier on December 7, 2008 at 10:39 am
I had not heard the term Christo Fascist until today. It came up when I was looking up the term “a cure for cynicism”. How ironic that it led to this rather bizarre conversation about FOF and shopping.
I think I just found the cure for cynicism. I will be thankful for what I have and who I have to share it with and for Jesus who came to save us from the madness this planet has become. It was crazy then. It’s crazy at a faster pace now. I will light a candle on my Advent wreath and read about the peace he offers us. I will stay out of all the stores and shop Amazon online in my pj’s while I drink my coffee.
Posted by JP Manzi on December 8, 2008 at 7:19 pm
How petty.
Do Christians think to themselves
“Hey honey, you know we should shop at Target because they are more inclined to say Merry Christmas to me then Happy Holidays”
How dumb.
Isn’t Target the company that refuses to allow the Salvation Army to collect money in front of their stores?
Posted by WaltzInExile on January 4, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Okay, I’m late to the party and I know Christmas (X-mas) is over but for the love of all that’s awesome in this world, why did LL Bean have to be on that list? WHY?