Will retailers join Trump’s ‘Christmas’ campaign?

It’s too early for holiday symbols to be on display in stores, true, but it’s certainly not too early to fire a salvo in the yearly holiday greeting dispute.

Sure enough, on Oct. 13 President Donald Trump threw down the gauntlet in the Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays debate. Speaking at the Values Voters Summit, Trump said:

“We’re getting near that beautiful Christmas season that people don’t talk about anymore. They don’t use the word Christmas because it’s not politically correct. You go to department stores and they’ll say ‘Happy New Year,’ or they’ll say other things and it’ll be red, they’ll have it painted. Well, guess what? We’re saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again.”

Given the way the president has been able to badger the National Football League over the national anthem protests, I would think his intimation that he will pressure retailers to utter Merry Christmas and not the more generic Happy Holidays is not to be taken lightly.

Especially by an economic sector — brick-and-mortar retail — that is already having serious financial challenges. An iconic holiday store chain, Toys R Us, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month. A slew of chains have been closing stores by the thousands as they lose more and more market share to online retail websites like Amazon.

It would stand to reason the last thing a store manager or shopkeeper wants in the most important shopping time of the year is a backlash led by the president over a two-word seasonal greeting. And after seeing Trump redefine the NFL anthem protests as a patriotic, respect-the-military issue, I’d bet retailers would not want to end up on Trump’s naughty list.

However, Toys R Us said its policy is to have no official policy on a holiday greeting.

“Toys ‘R’ Us does not have an official policy on a standard holiday greeting,” wrote Joseph Contrino, coordinator of corporate communications. “We encourage our team members to use holiday greetings as they see fit.”

And an observer of U.S. retailing said Trump’s admonition is likely to fall flat.

“It’s a tempest in a teapot,” said Steven P. Kirn, who teaches at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business. “I don’t expect to see any changes. I just don’t think it’s going to happen. I wouldn’t issue a corporate-wide edict.”

Kirn, who worked for Sears for 35 years, said retailing is sensitive to local customer bases, but those bases tend to be very diverse. He said stores in predominantly non-Christian communities, for example, stand to get a backlash if they push Christmas over, say, Hanukkah.

He said retail chains will choose the greeting that makes the most sense for them, and then stick with it regardless of what Trump says.

“Call me crazy but I just don’t think Trump’s bluster will have a big impact,” he said.

Kirn pointed out that former Fox personality Bill O’Reilly, who had an on-air pulpit every night, fought the war on Christmas for 15 years without a lot of success.

Maybe so, but having seen what an effective culture hawk Trump has been, I told Kirn I would not be surprised to hear Merry Christmas more often in stores this season.

“Trump’s free to say ‘Merry Christmas.’ Others are free to say ‘Happy Holidays,’ ” Kirn said. “I’m just glad to get greeted by someone who is pleasant and being festive. That’s good enough.”

Agreed, so, “Happy Festivus” everyone!