Activist’s Boycott Ends After Macy’s Allows `Christmas’ Back in Stores

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) About this time last year, Manuel Zamorano was making his list, checking it twice, and Macy’s department stores came up naughty, not nice. This year, the Folsom, Calif., grandfather is singing a different tune, something more like “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” Angry that the venerable department store […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) About this time last year, Manuel Zamorano was making his list, checking it twice, and Macy’s department stores came up naughty, not nice.

This year, the Folsom, Calif., grandfather is singing a different tune, something more like “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”


Angry that the venerable department store refused to use “Merry Christmas” in its advertising or among its sales clerks, Zamorano launched a boycott, which Macy’s officials quickly dismissed last year.

But as increasing numbers of retailers face pressure from conservative Christians and others to ditch the more generic “holidays” for more explicit references to Christmas, Zamorano says Macy’s has relented and he has called off the boycott.

“When you consider that 80 to 90 percent of the American public celebrates Christmas, that (retailers) actively solicit and advertise to buy their merchandise for Christmas, that they make millions and millions of dollars, and they’re not willing to mention the words `Merry Christmas,’ something is drastically wrong,” Zamorano said.

The difference this year, Zamorano and other activists say, is that their complaints are starting to have an effect. The U.S. Capitol Holiday Tree has been renamed the Capitol Christmas Tree, and Zamorano says people are growing tired of what he calls “political correctness run amok.”

“It’s a refreshing reassertion of common sense,” said Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute at Concerned Women for America, a conservative activist group in Washington, who said someone at Macy’s “woke up and smelled the eggnog.”

“People know these are Christmas trees, not holiday trees. They all know that people aren’t buying for Kwanzaa. It’s a relief to be able to acknowledge what everyone knows is the case _ it’s about Christmas.”

Zamorano, 57, says other battles loom ahead, including an active boycott against Sears, which Zamorano says has purged “Christmas” from its stores and advertising. Other targets include:


_ Target stores, which the American Family Association says has banned Christmas from its stores and advertising, and is the focus of an online AFA petition that includes at least 600,000 names.

_ Lands’ End, which the New York-based Catholic League has battled to return “Merry Christmas” to the pages of its catalogs.

_ Staples, Home Depot, JC Penney, Best Buy, Kohl’s, Kmart and Office Max all make little or no reference to “Christmas,” activists say, and could be the next targets of consumer boycotts.

“Shoppers are growing disgruntled by companies that are choosing to do away with a simple greeting like `Merry Christmas’ and they are showing it with their pocketbooks,” said Randy Sharp, director of special projects for the Mississippi-based American Family Association.

Other retailers, meanwhile, have followed Macy’s lead in carving out more room for Christmas. After complaints from the Catholic League, Wal-Mart agreed to create a “Christmas” page on its Web site, rather than “holiday,” to match its sections for “Hanukkah” and “Kwanzaa.”

Lowe’s home improvement stores agreed to rename its “holiday trees” as Christmas trees, and the AFA says it has promises from Walgreen’s drugstores to include “Merry Christmas” in its 2006 Christmas ad campaign.


For its part, Macy’s officials say it was all a misunderstanding. In a Nov. 17 letter to Zamorano, Macy’s Executive Vice President Louis Meunier said the store’s electronic gift cards feature “Merry Christmas” this year, as well as “Christmas” in its advertising jingle, print ads and in its flagship New York store windows.

“Our associates are free to wish our customers `Merry Christmas or Feliz Navidad or Happy Hanukkah or Habari Gani or Happy Kwanzaa, etc.’ as appropriate,” Meunier said in his letter to Zamorano.

Jim Sluzewski, a spokesman for Macy’s parent company, Federated Department Stores, said nothing has changed, but said, “In response to last year’s experience, we’re doing a better job of communicating what our position is and what we’re doing.”

Zamorano, has no staff, no budget, no board of directors and relied on word-of-mouth and his Web site (http://www.savemerrychristmas.org) to spread his message. Last year, he said his site got thousands of visitors and he slowly developed a following of concerned shoppers.

“When we brought this to the public’s attention, once people realized that `Merry Christmas’ had been taken out of the stores, the opinion of the American people was overwhelmingly in support of `Merry Christmas,’ and that’s what (retailers) realized,” he said.

_ Jason Kane contributed to this report.

MO/RB END ECKSTROM

Editors: Check the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for file photos of Manuel Zamorano to accompany this story. Search by subject or slug.


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