It seems that the AFA has gotten their hands on a copy of the August/September issue of "Source", the in-house magazine of Sam's Club. In it, there's one page where they mention planning ahead for the "holidays" - oh, the horror! According to the AFA, people should only be planning ahead for Christmas...
They're doing their best to fire up their base - their take on ths "issue" can be found here:
http://www.afa.net/...
And they've helpfully set up a page where you can send a note to Sam's Club president Doug McMillon and other key execs. Now, I know how this community feels about Wal-Mart and Sam's, and seeing the AFA attack them is actually rather funny - but we can also turn this on its head with minimal effort from kossacks everywhere. Follow me below the fold for an action plan...
Here's the AFA's web page where you can send the note - the key to this is that you can alter the text of the message to anything you'd like it to say. Here's some helpful replacement messages:
Dear President McMillon,
I wanted to let you know that I absolutely don't care if Sam's Club has elected to use "holiday" instead of "Christmas." I know you are going to get a lot of flak from people who think that your decision to use the term "holiday" means that you're "banning Christmas"; I hope you remember that such people have been whipped into a frenzy by others with socio-political axes to grind. If these people were really worried about Christianity, they would be doing some volunteer work in God's name, not emailing your company about noun useage.
In fact, my only request is that you not put out the December holiday items until AFTER Halloween.
Thank you for your consideration.
Or...
Dear President McMillon,
I don't normally shop at your establishment because I disagree with many of your management practices, but that's not why I'm writing today. I'm writing because the American Family Association is urging people to protest your use of the term "holidays" instead of "Christmas" in your in-house publication, Source. I know the reason you do so is that you don't want to offend anyone who isn't a Christian, and I think it's a good move on your company's part.
I would ask that you keep it up no matter how many e-mails you get from idiots. It really won't effect their shopping habits like they are saying because the facts are it really doesn't bother them as much as they are saying it does. They are only sending the e-mails because they were told to do so by the morons in charge at the AFA.
Or just make up your own message - the irony of using the AFA form to send positive messages is just too delicious. One word of caution - using this form will put you on their spam list. Their messages contain opt-out instructions if you don't want to receive them, but there's no readily apparent way to keep your name off the list when using this web form.