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Focus wants merchants to put 'Christmas' back in their stores

Last-minute shoppers walk past a sale sign in downtown Boston Signs like these upset some Christians, who feel Christmas is being erased from the holiday season. (AP Photo / Michael Dwyer)
Last-minute shoppers walk past a sale sign in downtown Boston Signs like these upset some Christians, who feel Christmas is being erased from the holiday season. (AP Photo / Michael Dwyer)Read more
    by Mark Barna, The Gazette (MCT)
    Published 

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Focus on the Family is worried Christmas is being forgotten.

For the third year in a row, Focus is taking retailers to task for using generic language like "season's greetings" and "holiday sales" with no reference to "Christmas," calling the omission an insult to the Christian faith.

But this year Focus has added a twist.

Rather than have Focus staffers decide which retailers are unfriendly to Christmas and publish the results, customers can rate retailers themselves at StandforChristmas.com, a Web site created by Focus that launched in late November.

Having the public decide is a better system, Earll said. "This Web site puts consumers in the driver's seat and will be more accurate of how people really feel," she said. "We think this will take off like a rocket."

Ratings, however, could change dramatically as more people vote. As of Nov. 25, each retailer had received on average only about 60 ratings.

In the video, Shepard rails against retail holiday catalogs that never mention "Christ" or "Christmas." "Retailers are free to choose whatever they want in holiday catalog land," Shepard says in the video, "but they need to be reminded that in these tough economic times, families are also free to choose where we'll spend our cash."