Friend or foe Christmas campaign
Christmas or Holiday? It can be so confusing around Christmas time. Some stores cheerfully greet you with “Merry Christmas,” supporting the traditional Christmas holiday full of Santa Claus and baby Jesus, while other stores choose a more general greeting by saying “Happy Holidays.”
Liberty Counsel, a Christian nonprofit organization, is beginning its ninth annual “Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign,” promising to be a friend to those businesses that support Christmas and a foe to those who censor it, according to a Liberty Counsel news release.
Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel Mathew Staver does not believe that any business can stay neutral when it comes to Christmas.
“Christmas is a state and federal holiday and is the only holiday celebrated around the world on the same day,” Staver said. “A company cannot seek profit off of Christmas and then pretend like it does not exist.”
For this reason, Liberty Counsel has compiled a “Naughty and Nice List” of almost 60 businesses, Staver said. Each business is categorized under “naughty” if they censor Christmas and under “nice” if they encourage it. These reports mainly come from consumers who report businesses to Liberty Counsel, he said. Most of the businesses on the list are considered “nice.” Also, each reference has an example of how the business has regarded Christmas to its customers on Liberty Counsel’s official website.
A few years ago Wal-Mart had holiday trees, not Christmas trees, and it forbade its cashiers from returning a greeting of Merry Christmas when the customer initiated it. After Liberty Counsel began their Naughty and Nice List, the following year Wal-Mart stated that it would mention Christmas “early and often” and it did, according to Staver.
“Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer and its example is one for others to follow,” Staver said.
There is a level of controversy among the religious and secular during the Christmas season and many shoppers do react to the store greetings, Staver said.
“When I walk into a store and they tell me ‘Merry Christmas’ it makes me happy and feel in the Christmas spirit. However, if someone says ‘Happy Holidays,’ I feel like they are taking all of the fun and good cheer out of the Christmas season,” Liberty senior Ashley Shaw said.
An example of a store on the nice list is Belk Department Store where employees greet customers with a “Merry Christmas” and the store has no shyness sprinkling “Christmas” all over the store and on its online shopping site, according to the “Naughty and Nice List.”
Not all stores on the “nice” side of the list have always been considered “nice,” though. Dick’s Sporting Goods was listed as a “naughty” for three years in a row. It was not until last year that the company began to alter its way of Christmas thinking.
“(Dick’s Sporting Goods) made significant changes from past years, when ‘holiday’ was the dominant theme of our advertising,” Vice-Chairman of Dick’s Sporting Goods Bill Columbo said.
Vanessa Allen, employee of Kohl’s, believes Christmas is a celebration of Jesus Christ, but she doesn’t believe saying Merry Christmas is necessarily a reflection of religious beliefs.
“Even if the store did not mandate me to say ‘Happy Holidays,’ I would still choose to say that over ‘Merry Christmas’ out of common respect for other people’s religious beliefs,” Allen said. “I would hate to cause a liability problem for the store or offend someone especially during such a jolly holiday.”