BENTONVILLE, Ark. — Retail giant Wal-Mart altered its Web site to acknowledge Christmas less than one day after a conservative Catholic group began a national boycott against the company. The boycott, enacted because of perceived discrimination against Christmas, but not Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, was abandoned when Wal-Mart revised its Web site Nov. 10. Wal-Mart also issued an apology for a customer-service e-mail that claimed Christmas does not have religious roots.
The New York-based Catholic League said Wal-Mart was treating Christmas as a secular holiday, while not taking a similar approach with the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, which begins the same day as Christmas, or Kwanzaa, a celebration of black culture that begins Dec. 26.
On Nov. 10, a search for Hanukkah on Wal-Mart’s Web site yielded 200 products and Kwanzaa 77. Prior to the change, a search for “Christmas” directed users to a “holiday” page, where a second link brought them to 7,967 Christmas items. Now customers are taken directly to the “Christmas” site.
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