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| Wal-Mart wishes you a Merry Christmas |
| 2006-11-09 |
| Wal-Mart will put "Christmas" back into the holidays this year, the retailer plans to announce Thursday. A year after religious and other groups boycotted retailers, including Wal-Mart, for downplaying Christmas, the world's largest retail chain will have an in-your-face Christmas theme this year. "We, quite frankly, have learned a lesson from last year," says Wal-Mart spokeswoman Linda Blakley. "We're not afraid to use the term 'Merry Christmas.' We'll use it early, and we'll use it often." Wal-Mart told about 7,000 associates of the plans at a conference last month and "was met with rapturous applause. ... We know many of our customers will feel the same," says John Fleming, Wal-Mart's executive vice president of marketing. Fleming says the retailer, which recently lowered prices on toys and electronics, will be pitching Christmas almost as much as "value" to holiday shoppers. New this year: •A TV ad trumpeting Christmas will air for the first time next week. Wal-Mart also will air TV ads along with the Salvation Army mentioning Christmas. The Christmas spirit is spreading. Macy's, the largest U.S. department store chain, plans to have "Merry Christmas" signs in all departments. All of Macy's window displays will have Christmas themes. At New York's Herald Square, the theme will be "Oh, Christmas Tree." "Our intention is to make every customer feel welcomed and appreciated, whether they celebrate Christmas or other holidays," spokesman Jim Sluzewski says. As at Wal-Mart, Macy's employees are encouraged to consider wishing customers holiday greetings that are appropriate to their race or religion, including Happy Kwanzaa or Feliz Navidad. Sometimes, even the best intentions can backfire. The Catholic League, one of the groups fighting what it calls the Christmas Wars, says a member alerted it that Macy's was pitching a "Happy Hanukkah" gift card but not a "Merry Christmas" one. After he was contacted by the group, Sluzewski determined a production "glitch" meant the Merry Christmas gift cards were available everywhere but in its Western region, where there were plenty of Happy Hanukkah gift cards. "We are correcting the problem," Sluzewski says. "Of all the cards to have a glitch with." |
| Posted by:Zhang Fei |
| #14 that reminds me something funny. I knew a guy who was hooked into the local surf scene. He used to make a pretty good summer profit by repackaging suntan oil and slapping his own label on it. Then he would pay cute girls go into the local drug stores and surf shops and ask for it for a couple of weeks before he'd go in and pitch it to the store. Then he and his friend would bad mouth any other product they saw someone using. Your using that? Did you know that caused an outbreak of rashes? You're using that? It's tested on animals. I know a girl who got third degree burns after using that... it turns your skin yellow - etc. Then he'd tell them you should use (his) product X because everyone is using it, it's great. Often they would be using the same product he was selling. He made a pretty good profit. |
| Posted by: anon 2006-11-09 23:21 |
| #13 Z: Remember, this one single organization is responsible for a solid ten percent of our trade deficit with communist China. Help wipe out America's manufacturing base while supporting the politburo, shop Wal-Mart. As a New Yorker, I don't shop Wal-Mart at all. Not because I hate Wal-Mart - it's just that I have to go into the burbs to do that. And let tell you - despite not shopping at Wal-Mart, almost every one of the little knick-knacks I buy, ranging from nail clippers to photo frames, all come from China. There's no way to avoid it. In time, Chinese wages and commercial rents will rise, and we will get our junk from somewhere else. Until then, it won't do any good to boycott Wal-Mart - we'd simply be buying the identical Chinese-made goods from Wal-Mart's competitors, but at a higher price. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2006-11-09 22:39 |
| #12 Zenster - I can't believe that you fell for all that "for the children" hype. Do you think that Macys or Staples doesn't get their stuff from China? Unless you are buying wool sweaters knitted by your neighbor, or wooden spoons whittled by the guy down the road, it's made in China. Boycotting WalMart is like buying the New York Times instead of the Boston Globe. When mega corporations spend their millions to produce documentaries to tell me I shouldn't shop at their competetors - I'm there, baby. I want to see what they don't want me to see. |
| Posted by: anon 2006-11-09 22:10 |
| #11 ItÂ’s about friggin time! How about some of those jelly-for-backbones politicians steeping up to the plate? |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2006-11-09 17:38 |
| #10 The old low-sales shoe is beginning to pinch, eh Wal-Mart? Remember, this one single organization is responsible for a solid ten percent of our trade deficit with communist China. Help wipe out America's manufacturing base while supporting the politburo, shop Wal-Mart. For those unfamiliar with the topic: Wal-Mart and China Wal-Mart buys much of its merchandise from China Wal-Mart reports that it purchased $18 billion of goods from China in 2004. Wal-Mart was responsible for about 1/10th of the U.S. trade deficit with China in 2005. [“U.S. Stock Investors Wary of Analyst `Yuan Plays': Taking Stock, Bloomberg, 7/1/05] If Wal-Mart were an individual economy, it would rank as China’s eighth-biggest trading partner, ahead of Russia, Australia and Canada. [China Business Weekly, 12/02/2004] Many of Wal-Mart's “American Suppliers” actually manufacture most or all of their products in China An example of an “American Supplier” is Hasbro, headquartered in Rhode Island. Today, Wal-Mart is the largest purchaser of Hasbro products—accounting for 21 percent of all Hasbro goods or more than $600 million in sales. But Hasbro reports, “We source production of substantially all of our toy products and certain of our game products through unrelated manufacturers in various Far East countries, principally China.” Hasbro specifies that “the substantial majority of our toy products are manufactured in China.” [2004 Hasbro 10-K filed with the SEC] Wal-Mart's Chinese factory workers are treated poorly Workers making clothing for Wal-Mart in Shenzhen, China filed a class action lawsuit against Wal-Mart in September 2005 claiming that they were not paid the legal minimum wage, not permitted to take holidays off and were forced to work overtime. They said their employer had withheld the first three months of all workers' pay, almost making them indentured servants because the company refused to pay the money if they quit. [New York Times, September 14, 2005] Workers making toys for Wal-Mart in China’s Guangdong Province reported that they would have to meet a quota of painting 8,900 toy pieces in an eight hour shift in order to earn the stated wage of $3.45 a day. If they failed to meet that quota, the factory would only pay them $1.23 for a day’s work. [China Labor Watch, December 21, 2005] |
| Posted by: Zenster 2006-11-09 14:25 |
| #9 yes they have, like the day after Hallo-frickin-ween. No Christmas decorations until AFTER the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade has launched all the balloons. dammit. /thank you |
| Posted by: USN, ret. 2006-11-09 13:58 |
| #8 Arrrrrggggghhh. Spell check is your friend. That should be "homosexual agenda-pushers" Yeah, ARMYGUY, that's where I got it too. |
| Posted by: BA 2006-11-09 13:28 |
| #7 Happy "Give-me-my-freaken-toys-damnit!" Christmas. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2006-11-09 12:35 |
| #6 YA,BA I got the same notice from AFA Action alert. Ya'll go there and sign the petition!! |
| Posted by: ARMYGUY 2006-11-09 11:47 |
| #5 lol, ed. This announcement the day after I got a notice that Wal-Mart will be donating 5% of its online sales to homosexual agneda-pusher. |
| Posted by: BA 2006-11-09 11:26 |
| #4 PS. Happy Festivus. |
| Posted by: ed 2006-11-09 10:53 |
| #3 South Korea is quarter Christian (same as Buddhism) and Christianity will be the undisputed largest religion. In addition many are more fervent than in the West. |
| Posted by: ed 2006-11-09 10:52 |
| #2 A year after religious and other groups boycotted retailers, including Wal-Mart (WMT), for downplaying Christmas, the world's largest retail chain will have an in-your-face Christmas theme this year. Anyone who's been stationed in Japan or South Korea know that the local merchants have adopted the holiday as well even though they're not Christian nations. If you look into the background of the Christmas as practiced today, it has strong ties to the efforts of New York merchants of the early half of the 19th Century to promote commercial business more than tied to a 'Christian' religious celebration with significant pagan rituals and associations. ItÂ’s a feature, not a bug. Just enjoy. |
| Posted by: Procopius2K 2006-11-09 10:40 |
| #1 "...appropriate to their race or religion, including Happy Kwanzaa..." I'd like to see them wish my black daughter-in-law a Happy Kwanzaa 8^) The presumption that blacks belive in that pseudo hippie prison crap would backfire all over their ass. And my son wouldn't even have to help. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2006-11-09 09:52 |