November 2005

Mr. Robert Ulrich
CEO, Target Corporation
1000 Nicollet Mall
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55403

Dear Mr. Ulrich:

While I realize this may not reach your inbox, I wanted your corporation to know I haven't signed any petition to stop shopping at Target.

I did that on our own.

In New Jersey I used to shop at Target all the time, enjoying my visits there and buying innovative products such as Target's thick-glass protectors that sit on my kitchen counters today.

Moving south, I had started to shop at a Target store in Asheville, North Carolina. But for Christmas 2004, the board of directors at Target decided its stores would no longer assist the poor through allowing The Salvation Army to stand at its entrances. While the Army had previously collected donations on behalf of the less fortunate, political correctness held the day at Target for 13-silver coins to be thrown at the Army, similar to what the Pharisees had done millenniums ago to remove another annoyance off their backs.

You and your board must have forgotten that older people had grown up with the smiles of the Salvation Army since they were teenagers in the 1950s, tens-of-millions of them still looking forward to seeing the Army at Christmas. Most probably even remember watching an old movie at the time, which showed the Salvation Army in the front of American retail stores in the 1930s.

The Army's friendly red pots and bell-ringing volunteers, dressed in Santa Clause suits, were delightful images of good will that reminded us all of why Christmas was so special.

The movie's story line took place in a Macy's Department Store where a sarcastic manager, maybe not much different than your board, saw employees as stupid to believe in a silly old myth about Santa Claus. You might remember the old geezer in the movie, Miracle on 34th Street.

Well, there are no miracles or delightful images of the season at Target in Asheville, or I guess at any other Target Store across America. But I am proud to report to you I have held fast in not visiting a Target Store since December of 2004, and will continue to do so. And I will still have a Merry Christmas without presents under my tree from the bah-humbug store.

You already know the organizations that boycott Target for joining the dark side with groups like the 300,000-member ACLU that also want to crush Christian symbols across the country. But I bet on the other side of the coin there are also tens-of-millions of people out there, individuals like me, who you don't know about that won't be shopping in Target Stores this Christmas.

And Target won't even know their names, because it isn't going to see their faces or have access to their credit cards or their dollars as they head elsewhere to celebrate their sacred traditions.

Happy Holidays!