Mind The Gap

Oh, hello there. 

Another post via Jezebel inspired me to react in blog post form*:

Mind The Gap - the gap - Jezebel:

The American Family Association is not amused at The Gap for adding greetings like 'Happy Whateveryouwannukah' and 'Mo' Mistletoe' to its holiday ad campaign, which they claim 'censors' Christmas. [Brandweek]"

I saw this commercial last night and had a similar reaction ... i.e. "do-whatever-you-wanna-kuh" is not good. There's meaning behind the Christmas and Hanukkah celebrations, and this commercial, seemingly moreso than others, blatantly thumbs its nose at those celebrations.

But then I thought about it, and my slightly more rational side (as there is no truly rational Mari) says they're just trying to sell clothes, so let them say what they want, and it's catchy besides. It's not like a church is propagating the idea that you can believe what you want, mix and match until you're happy.

This is a topic of discussion in my faith/Methodism class (whether it's OK to just pick your favorite parts of various religions and kind of create your own path ... consensus: it's not). I'm reading a Q&A book about Methodism and the Articles of Religion, so it's kind of top-of-mind, which might account for my initial sour-puss reaction to the advertisement.
*Normally I might have just shared this in my Google Reader, but knowing I have a daily blog post to create tends to skew things toward a post rather than a share.

Here's the ad via YouTube: