Shame on you Atlantic Superstore and Loblaws!

“Too much is never enough.”

“We say there’s no such thing as too much Holiday.  To help you celebrate in exuberant, over-the-top style, we’ve made…”

“This is the season for overstatement.  Let’s go nuts.”

These are quotes from today’s flyer ads covering the sales available at Atlantic Superstore / Loblaws Inc. for the period November 11 through November 24, 2011.  When I read the words, I felt like someone had gut-punched me, hard.

I’m sure that the words in the ads are meant to entice readers into flurries of spending for groceries, gifts, house wares and clothing, from now until the holidays.

Unfortunately, what is intended to be an advertising lure comes off as bad taste, encouragement to spend wastefully and excessively.

“This is the season for overstatement.  Let’s go nuts.”  This is supposed to be a cute ad, promoting Christmas nutcrackers. Instead it is sickening.  Flippant. Pejorative language to anyone living with mental illness.

“Too much is never enough.”  I understand what Atlantic Superstore and Loblaws Inc. are trying to accomplish—to interest customers, to appeal to the need to have it all; I find the sentence and the concept nauseating.

For the holidays, what about spending less, giving more of yourself or your time to others?  What about loving everyone, including those who are inconvenient or sometimes bothersome?  What about living more compassionately with less me, me, and me?

There is such a “thing as too much Holiday.”  No one needs to “celebrate in exuberant, over-the-top style” when there are people in this community who eat at food-banks or soup kitchens, when there are folks who live in deplorable accommodations in rooming houses or on the streets, when people with mental illness live alone and lonely, shunned by families because of illness and behaviour they didn’t choose.

I understand what the flyer is attempting to do.  Stores are running a business, making profit, increasing sales, providing employment. I get that.

But, come on!  “Too much is never enough.”

Really?

Shame on you Atlantic Superstore and Loblaws Inc!

This photo and opinion are mine.