Merchants haven't been the only ones discouraging those who work for them from using the word "Christmas" during the Christmas shopping season. The press has been at it for years, and those efforts have brought regrettable results.
This is the eleventh year of an effort I began in 2005. Each year has involved three sets of Google News searches on "Christmas shopping season" and "holiday shopping season" (both terms in quotes) done a few days before Christmas, two weeks earlier, and four weeks earlier. In late November, after doing the first round, I reported that the percentage of "Christmas shopping season" mentions came in "at the lowest level in all of the years I have been tracking." Sadly, with all three rounds now completed, the raw percentage increased a bit from the first round, but the overall result hasn't changed.
As seen in the graph which follows, this year's result came down to one "Christmas" mention for about every 13 "holiday" mentions:
After an inexplicable jump in 2013, the percentage of media mentions of the "Christmas shopping season" has plunged during the past two years. This year's result of 7.02 percent is over five points lower than was seen in 2005, the first year of this effort, or a drop of 42 percent. It seems pretty safe to say that this year's result isn't just a 10-year low; it's probably an all-time low.
As I wrote last month:
I suppose one can debate whether there has been a "war on Christmas" in general during the past decade, but there certainly has been a war on mentioning "Christmas" in connection with commerce during that time — and "Christmas" is losing bigtime.
Merchants and the journalists who report on business and commerce might consider that their growing refusal to call the season what it really is for the vast majority of Americans might be part of the reason why shopping enthusiasm appears to be waning, and why the pathetic excuse-making exercises for why this year isn't working out so well are already in full swing.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
