EDITORIAL – Christians sway Wal-marketing

In preparation for the holiday sales season, Wal-Mart has welcomed “Christmas” back into its… In preparation for the holiday sales season, Wal-Mart has welcomed “Christmas” back into its vocabulary.

Wal-Mart’s public shift in marketing comes a year after religious groups, led by The American Family Association and The Catholic League, organized a massive boycott of retailers, including Wal-Mart, that had taken a more secularized approach to holiday marketing.

Wal-Mart, in an attempt to increase sales for the 2006 holiday season, caved into the religious rights’ demands, and it will now encourage employees to wish shoppers a “Merry Christmas.” It will also launch TV ads this week emphasizing Christmas, and it has changed the name of its seasonal decorations department from “The Holiday Shop” to the “Christmas Shop,” according to CNN.

“We, quite frankly, have learned a lesson from last year,” Wal-Mart spokeswoman Linda Blakely told USA Today. “We’re not afraid to use the term ‘Merry Christmas.’ We’ll use it early, and we’ll use it often.”

While we despise the word “Christmakwanzakah” as much as the next person, we don’t understand the fuss made by the religious right over retail stores’ choice to promote a secular holiday season.

Despite popular belief, Christmas is not the only holiday celebrated in the month of December, and while an employee can in no way be expected to direct the appropriate holiday greeting per religion of choice to each shopper, a simple “Happy Holidays” is usually enough to satisfy every religious affiliation.

And even with a secularized approach to marketing, during the holiday season, retails stores still manage to scream “Christmas” from every wall. So, why shouldn’t a section of the store that sells only wreaths, lights and other Christmas paraphernalia be granted the name “Christmas Shop?” What other holiday is it centered on? There is no need to water down the truth.

We are not fighting against the obvious. Call a Christmas tree what it is — a Christmas tree. We strongly believe that Jews and other religious sects will not be offended.

What we do disagree with, however, is the constant pressure from the religious right toward not only our government — but now our stores. These groups obviously anticipate that a cheery “Merry Christmas” greeting will hardly offend non-Christian shoppers; yet they feel the need to organize a massive boycott when employees offer only a “Happy Holidays” as they enter the red and green, Santa-covered walls of their local Wal-Mart.

And Wal-Mart, by choosing to publicly cave into their demands, has taken the risk of potentially alienating the millions of non-Christian shoppers who dare to enter its doors — or those of any other retail store, for that matter — during the manic holiday shopping season.