Lowe’s caught selling Christmas trees under an assumed name
After dubbing Christmas trees in their 2007 Holiday Catalogue, "Family trees," Lowe's has come forward and attributed the "assumed name" to a "mistake" in advertising.
According to the American Family Association (AFA) Lowe's advertised hundreds of gift items in their catalogue, including scores of "Family trees." In fact, the word "Christmas" only appears two times in the entire holiday catalog. The ads mentioning Christmas cover only 12 square inches of the 5236 square inches available.
"Lowe's even has one of their Family trees turned upside down on a stand," said an AFA representative. "We are not sure what the significance of that is."
The company apologized for the confusion created in its 2007 holiday catalog when it headlined the page of Christmas trees "family trees." The error was not caught before the publication was distributed, and Lowe's says it is disappointed in the breakdown in its proofing process.
Lowe's has said that they refer to trees as Christmas trees in this season's television and magazine ads and in its advertising flyers. The company says it is redoubling its efforts to proof its catalogs in the future to prevent this issue from recurring.
Editor's Note: This article cross posted at MYVOICENEWS.COM
So much for the news part of this bit; now let's get real. Does anybody really feel good about this? I mean what actually happened here? Basically, Lowe's caved to economic pressure. They were coerced into not being P.C. And the folks over at AFA (who I largely support, BTW) apparently feel that this is a good thing. They and others feel that the spirit of Christmas was honored by this. I'm not so sure.
We all know that if the AFA and their grassroots supporters hadn't raised hell about this, there would have been no retraction and no apology from Lowes. The folks at Lowes aren't stupid. They realize that Christians like myself won't support businesses who want our dollar as a result of the so called Holy Day, but don't want to honor it by paying homage to our traditions. And they have every right NOT to honor it. But they're realizing that if they don't, they will, literally, pay a price for that. So let's be honest. Lowe's didn't make a mistake with their holiday catalogue. (I know it; you know it, and Lowe's knows it.) They just realized (allegedly) that in doing so, they'd piss off a lot of Christians and lose money. Then again, they don't want to miss out on everyone else's dollars either. So what do they do? They print the holiday catalogue which ingratiates Lowe's with everyone who couldn't care less about the reason for the season, and then chalk the whole thing up to a mistake in advertising, while apologizing profusely to the Christians. We Christians, in turn, not wanting to appear UNChristian, forgive them and once again patronize their establishment. You've gotta admit, those advertising executives at Lowes are pretty shrewd.
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