Being that the fast forward button on my DVR is my friend I don’t see many commercials, but I saw this one. This commercial could be the dictionary entry for relativism.
86 the rules, you do what just feels right.
Ah, the very meaning of Christmas. Christ was born into the world so that we could just do what feels right. Hey I feel like beating up the producers of this commercial, think they would mind?
Of course any mention of the made up holiday by a convicted torturer (aka Kwanzaa) annoys me, but now we even get Solstice added to the list. As if when the tilt of the Earth’s axis is most inclined toward or away from the Sun has anything to do with shopping at the Gap. Or is it that Solstice Claus will come this year on the 21st of December. How many children will wake up disappointed with their tilt of the earth gifts.
This commercial by trying to be multiculturally sensitive become culturally insensitive. So often attempts at inoffensiveness become offensive.
We have heard of “God of the Gaps” arguments, well these commercials are evidence that there is no God in the Gap stores, just smarmy multiculturalism.
Deacon Greg Kandra posts asking Is the Gap ad anti-Christmas? and reports that some of now boycotting Gap because of the commercial. Is the ad anti-Christmas? Well it was certainly not meant to be so. Relativism is never really anti-anything in theory – just in practice. Though really all commercializations of Christmas are to some extent anti-Christmas in that they totally miss the point that a savior came into the world to save us from our sins.
I was wondering if there would be a 2009 Tossmas and sure enough there is.
10 comments
Jeff: Since the Solstice is a Wiccan holiday, I guess this marks the first major company to market to them on one of their “holidays”.
The Gap leads the rest in this. About 10 years ago, I saw a Gap billboard that said in huge type: “It’s Holiday!” As if that one word should suffice to grant meaning to their desire to drain your wallet into their coffers.
I don’t think they care one whit about the “Christmas wars.” I think they care about money, pure and simple, and they’re just trying to expand their market to reach every last person in the United States.
Wait until they trot out Diwali and Eid holiday shopping commercials.
It’s not that relativism is anti-anything, it’s that it is anti-Everything.
There is no respect given in this commercial to anyone but PT Barnum’s Sucker.
The Solstice is also celebrated by other neo-pagan groups (most of whom are, admittedly, influenced by Wicca) and by some people (often of an environmentalist bent; sometimes of a misty-wisty, wishy-washy, “I’m spiritual, but not religious” bent) who do not want to affiliate themselves with Christianity, yet are used to a celebration around that time of year and figure “hey, here’s a thing right nearby that gives the excuse for celebration and presents.”
I say more power to US retailers if they want to start marketing to Eid and Diwali shoppers. At least those are real, embedded-in-culture holidays, not made up like Kwanzaa or Holiday. And they might make more money at it. There aren’t that many Hindus and Muslims in this country, but there aren’t many people who celebrate the Solstice either. Combine all the neo-pagans and all the vaguely “spiritual”, vaguely environmentalist people who want Christmas-time celebrations without calling it Christmas, and they are still outnumbered by people like me who might notice it’s the Solstice and say, “hmm, cool, it’s the Solstice today” and go about our business. And we are outnumbered by the people who neither notice nor care.
Kwanzaa is celebrated by so few people that the retailers have never managed to make any noticeable amount of money from it. Yet even it is celebrated by more people than this new Holiday holiday. I have yet to find a single person anywhere who celebrates Holiday. There are people who celebrate Festivus. But not Holiday.
Retailers are in it for the money, of course, so I don’t know why they would bother marketing to a holiday that is celebrated by fewer people than Festivus, a joke holiday originating from the “show about nothing”.
“86 the rules, you do what just feels right.”
So let’s organize a Gap shoplifting campaign. Heck, stealing from them would make me feel right.
“86 the rules, you do what just feels right.”
So let’s organize a Gap shoplifting campaign. Heck, stealing from them would make me feel right.
Thanks for the link, Jeff!
I’ve seen the commercial before, too – and I think the producers have a mighty large gap between the ears.
Even in their attempt to be all-embracing of every “holiday,” most of it came back to Christmas, (trees, that shameless paraphrasing of “the night before Christmas”) showing that they can’t hide the fact that Christmas is the real subject of the gift-buying and giving. ;-7
P.S. invoking the solstice is the stupidest thing I have yet to see from retailers. Thanks for giving this shopper a reason to avoid your store.
A copany whose initials stand for Gay And Proud cannot be expected to have Christian Virtue.
Pray for them.
The boycott has been called off. Now “Christians” can return to buying GAP products, mostly made in Red China by child and slave labor by people who would be jailed if they celebrated Christmas.
Once again, the “Christian Right” misses the mark.
The boycott has been called off. Now “Christians” can return to buying GAP products, mostly made in Red China by child and slave labor by people who would be jailed if they celebrated Christmas.
Once again, the “Christian Right” misses the mark.