Australia Starts the War on Christmas

Australia Starts the War on Christmas

According to News.com.au, Nov. 11:

SANTAS working in shopping centres across Australia have been banned from bellowing “ho ho ho” because it might frighten children.
[…]

“The reason behind that is we find that in some cases the little kids can get a little bit scared of the deep ‘ho, ho, hos’ and we ask them to be mindful of keeping their voices to a lower level,” [Westaff national operations manager Glen Jansz] said.

According to AFP,

One disgruntled Santa told the newspaper a recruitment firm warned him not to use “ho ho ho” because it could frighten children and was too close to “ho”, a US slang term for prostitute.

Thankfully, today we have:

Recruitment firm Westaff, which supplies hundreds of Santas for events around Australia, has backed down from its ban on the traditional greeting following a backlash from employees.

The company wanted to ban “Ho, ho, ho” for fear it might scare some of the children.

A Myer spokesman said store management believed the expression was an important Christmas tradition.