Gap’s Holiday Ads Inspire a Christmas War

By Rigel Celeste on November 19th, 2009

• Share
• Link to StumbleUpon
• 2 Comments

Gap’s recent holiday ad series featuring a group of happy, bouncy, singing dancers spreading holiday cheer has inspired anything but cheer from the American Family Association. They’re all up in arms over the fact that Gap doesn’t use the word “Christmas” in its advertisements and have even gone so far as to ask everyone to ban shopping at Gap for the rest of the holiday season, claiming “they want all the commerce without the Christmas.”

Hmmm. Just two problems:

#1 Gap DOES use the word “Christmas,” quite prominently. In its spot, titled “Go Ho Ho,” (above) all the singers happily belt out the refrain, “Go Christmas, go Hanukkah, go Kwanzaa, go solstice. . . . Do whatever you wannukkah and to all a cheery night.”

and

#2 What the heck is your problem, American Family Assn? I believe in God and celebrate Christmas as the birthday of Jesus, but I don’t need to have the word “Christmas” jammed and plastered into every holiday advertisement I see. Although I wish it weren’t the case, the truth is it’s been used by so many so often that the word “Christmas” has all but lost its religious meaning except on a personal or family level anyway. Why not complain instead when companies use it and abuse it strictly for the profit factor?

Anyway, enough energy has been wasted on this already. If you like Gap, shop there. If you don’t like Gap, don’t shop there. Problem solved.