(CNSNews.com) - An early skirmish in this year’s “War on Christmas” ended on Tuesday when the nationwide home improvement chain Lowe’s apologized for referring to Christmas trees in its holiday catalog as “family trees.” “That was a complete error,” Maureen Rich, a spokeswoman for Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse - which serves more than 13 million customers a week in its 1,400 stores across the nation - told Cybercast News Service .
“Right now, we’re extremely disappointed in this breakdown in our own creative process. “We are apologizing to customers today for any confusion our holiday catalog created,” Rich said. She explained that the full-color document is called a holiday catalog “because it encompasses all the holidays from October through January.” Rich’s comments came in response to an “Action Alert” sent out earlier in the day by the Mississippi-based American Family Association.
The e-mail stated: “In an effort to avoid the use of the term ‘Christmas tree,’ Lowe’s [is] now calling them ‘family trees.’” “In their Holiday 2007 catalog, containing 56 pages of Christmas gifts Lowe’s advertises hundreds of gift items, including scores of ‘family trees,’” the message continued.
“In fact, the word ‘Christmas’ only appears two times in the entire holiday catalog.” “Lowe’s evidently did not want to offend any non-Christians; therefore, they replaced ‘Christmas tree’ with ‘family tree,’” the AFA e-mail said. “Of course, if Christians are offended, that is evidently OK. “An online search of Lowe’s does reference some ‘Christmas’ items.