November 23, 2017

Try searching for your favourite store's Christmas opening hours ...

Has anyone else noticed that things look a little different on Google lately?

Type 'Kmart Christmas opening hours' (because let's face it, that's the place we're most likely to be apart from at home with our kids!) and you'll see that December 25 might affect the store's usual 8am-10pm trading, but not because of Christmas Day ... no, it's Day of the Family.

Maybe Kmart has declared a new holiday?

At first, you'd be forgiven for assuming that the bigwigs at Kmart (those beautiful genius sorcerers) had made the name change themselves, but that wouldn't explain why, in-store, Kmart has the word CHRISTMAS emblazoned in gold and silver on 70% of its stock right now.

Maybe Bunnings can shed some non-denominational light on the subject? Why don't we see what time we can visit the benevolent purveyors of sausage sizzle for the inevitable batteries Santa forgot to buy?

Day of the Family has won the internet

As you can see, Bunnings too has traded in Christmas for the Day of the Family. In fact, it's all over the internet.

But wait - surely The Christmas Store - you know, that place that cruelly makes a highschool graduate stand outside in 40 degree heat wearing a Santa outfit - surely THAT place would be impervious to the name-change?

Nope.

It seems that the folks at Google have decided to give Christmas Day a titular makeover, and as you can imagine, people are having some feelings about it.

"It's f**king CHRISTMAS DAY!" exclaimed one mum Kidspot asked about the change.

"Well that's bloody ridiculous," muttered another.

Others aren't phased by the change, in fact supporting the more inclusively-named holiday.

"I'm 100 percent here for moves that break down cultural imperialism," explained Alys, a mother-of-two from Melbourne, "We live in a multi-cultural community and our national celebrations ought to reflect that. Anything else is borderline racist."

Kidspot reached out to Google and their official comment is:



“Thanks for bringing this to our attention, our Search Elves are working on a fix. And don't worry, 🎅 is still coming to town!”

Gustaf Brusewitz, Head of Communications, Google Australia

LISTEN: More on Christmas - or, erm - Day of the Family - on our podcast.