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Claim: Target has banned use of the phrase "Merry Christmas" in its stores and advertising.
Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2005]
Origins: It was never true that Target had "banned" the use of the phrase 'Merry Christmas' in their stores. Store employees were, in Target's words, always free to "use their own discretion in offering a However, observation of Target's in-store, web, and printed promotional materials indicated that the discount chain was among the many retailers (in the U.S., at least) who began the 2005 holiday season by downplaying or eschewing use of the word "Christmas" in favor of the less-specific word "Holiday." We didn't find any signage in our local Target that used the word "Christmas." All the promotional signs we saw carried the chain's non-specific holiday slogans, such as "Savings for the Season" or "Gather Round" (even though the text of the latter was always printed in the traditional green-and-red colors of Christmas). Even many of the shelf tags identifying Christmas-specific products employed the phrase "Traditional Holiday" rather than "Christmas" (We do note that in many cases, the names by which merchandise is identified are supplied by the supplier, not the retailer. We saw boxes of decorative reindeer lawn figures which the manufacturer had designated on the packaging as "Holiday Reindeer," and we also noticed many artificial Christmas trees came in supplier-produced cartons which identified them only as "Pine trees" or "Fir trees," not "Christmas trees.") Although Target's web site certainly offered Christmas-related merchandise, we found hardly any use of the word "Christmas" itself on any non-product pages  Even Target's Holiday Shipping Dates link presents customers with a chart that informs them about lead times needed to ensure gift delivery in time for  (We do note that this year a confluence of several holidays occurs in late December: Hanukkah begins on Christmas Day and ends just after New Year's Day, and Kwanzaa takes place during that same period.) Likewise, the Target circulars we received with our Sunday newspapers have offered shoppers "lowest holiday prices" and invited shoppers to "Indulge your holiday guests," "Spread some cheer, treetop to tabletop," and "Bring out the beauty of the holiday" (even on pages advertising Christmas decorations), but the word "Christmas" itself didn't appear. During the second week of December 2005, however, Target responded to public pressure and began putting the word "Christmas" back into their promotional material, as the Los Angeles Times noted on
Target, too, started the season with a generic marketing theme. It pushed holiday plates, holiday leggings, holiday ornaments, holiday trees
The AFA also announced on Last updated: 9 December 2005 This material may not be reproduced without permission. snopes and the snopes.com logo are registered service marks of snopes.com.  Sources:
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