Mall's Santa Display Sparks Outcry
Malls across the country are getting back in the Christmas spirit after their non-secular “glacier experience” displays — a substitute for the traditional Christmas setup — immediately fell flat with customers.
Instead of the usual Christmas trees and helpful elves, Simon Malls decided to try something new this year: In seven of its malls across the country, the company installed a display called the Glacier Experience, which involved a traditional Santa in a background of what were supposed to look like North Pole glaciers. The interactive display also included a sound and light show.
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But mall-goers weren’t interested in the new approach. A Change.org petition posted on Friday out of Charlotte, North Carolina, titled “Tell Southpark Mall and Simon Malls to Bring Back the Christmas Tree,” had more than 24,000 signatures by Monday morning. A similar petition addressed to the Roosevelt Field Mall in New York, which also had the display, had more than 2,000 signatures by Monday morning.
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Officials at Simon Malls, which owns and operates malls across the country, heard the outcry and decided to go back to the traditional Christmas décor over the weekend. “It was a mistake, and we had to correct [it],” Simon Malls President David Contis told the Charlotte Observer. “If we lose money, so be it.”
Contis told the paper that the Glacier Experience — which was installed on Friday — cost tens of thousands of dollars and took months to build. But it only took a day to dismantle the display that had a lot of jolly shoppers losing their holiday cheer. A number of comments on social media complained that the display looked more like a spaceship than a glacier, and some even called for a mall boycott. “It looks like a scene from a Star Trek movie,” wrote one commenter on the Charlotte petition. “Absolutely nothing Christmasy about this set.” Another said, “This is the worst Christmas display I have ever seen in my entire life. There is absolutely nothing festive or inviting with this new glacier/spaceship looking thing. It looks cheap! Very disappointed with the latest choice management has made to become politically correct!!!”
The brouhaha comes at the same time a similar holiday-retail controversy is building momentum — the one concerning Starbucks and its newly designed holiday season coffee cups, which are red and minimalist, with no reindeer or other Christmas symbols. The cups have sparked viral outrage from conservative groups, which are calling it yet another “war on Christmas,” and created a protest hashtag, #MerryChristmasStarbucks.
But Simon Malls did not let its backlash get out of hand, with officials saying they had no interest in pressing the issue. “It was something we tried. It was not secular,” Contis told News12 in New York. “The good thing about us is that we heard them, we listened, we reacted, we made a mistake, and we changed it.”
(Top photo: Boycott Roosevelt Field Mall till they bring the Christmas tree/Facebook)
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