Catholic League president William Donohue spoke to the issue of holiday greeting cards today:
“Comparing Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa e-cards by Hallmark, American Greetings and Yahoo! Greetings, the ones by Hallmark are the most equitable in their treatment of the three holidays. There are some real problems with the other two companies.
“American Greetings has a slew of tasteless Christmas cards. For example, there is one where elves working with Santa’s laundry hold up his underwear and exclaim, ‘Man! You think that a guy who can deliver toys all over the world in one night could at least learn to wipe himself a bit better!’ There is also a ‘Risqué’ set of cards that show a woman stripping suggestively and displaying S&M gear; at one point she’s dressed like an angel, saying, ‘Ever make an angel in the snow?’ At the end, the animation says, ‘Now that I’ve got your attention, Merry Christmas!’ There is also a category of ‘Rude’ cards, such as the one that lists all the annoying parts of the holiday season, with the comment, ‘It’s Christmas. Hope yours doesn’t suck.’ What is perhaps most telling about American Greetings is the total absence of tasteless Hanukkah and Kwanzaa cards. Indeed, neither of these two holidays merit a ‘Risqué’ or ‘Rude’ section—that’s reserved only for Christmas.
“Hanukkah is a minor holiday in the Jewish calendar, but it commands the utmost respect from Yahoo! Greetings. Of the 33 Hanukkah cards, 26 display a Star of David or Menorah. Of the 443 Christmas cards, 9 are religious. In other words, 79% of the Hanukkah cards are religious, compared to 2% of the Christmas cards.
“None of this is by accident. For a couple of decades now, there has been a systematic attempt to dilute the sacred message of Christmas while elevating the prominence of Hanukkah and Kwanzaa (a recent secular invention). This is the fruit of multiculturalism. It is also the fruit of bigotry. Unfortunately, the two phenomena are congenitally related.”
