Don we now our gay apparel

Hallmark's Keepsake Sweater Ornament says, "Don we now our fun apparel. But they did change the lyrics, and despite the apology, the sweater ornament is still available on the Hallmark website, though in a tacit acknowledgment of the controversy over the wording, the web copy now reads.

"Gay Apparel" Stripped from Christmas Carol, But Quickly Re-donned

When it comes to Christmas sweaters, gaudy can be good! Hang up this flashy sweater to make your now outfit complete. With its catchy phrase, Don we now our FUN apparel! What joke, you might ask? The joke that Hallmark got into trouble because it shied away from a word with sexual connotations?

But gay had other meanings too. By the nineteenth century gay could serve as a euphemism for prostitution. By the s in the United States, gay also began to acquire a slang sense referring to homosexuality. Apparently, Grant ad libbed the line, and director Howard Hawks left it in, which may explain how it got past the censors of Hays office who were intent on erasing sexuality from Hollywood movies.

The OED cites this as an example of an early homosexual reference for the term, though it also cites earlier uses by Gertrude Stein and Noel Coward dated andrespectively. Hallmark shunned gay because of its sexual connotation. Compounding gay avoidance is its latest slang transformation: calling something, or someone, gay can signal 'that's uncool.

Many American schools have mounted campaigns to get students to abandon this slang usage because it can be offensive there are our campaigns against the slang use of retarded, not to mention lame, used in a similarly negative and potentially offensive sense. Apparel can be gay, grammatically, and it can be funny, they would surely say, because funny is the adjective, though funny is not what Hallmark means here.

But the purists would be wrong, as they often are when it comes to language. Merriam-Webster traces adjectival fun back toand the American Heritage Dictionary 5e recognizes it as well. The company further " explained " why it chose fun to replace gay:. The trend of wearing festively decorated Christmas sweaters to parties is all about apparel, and this ornament is intended to play into that, so the planning team decided to say what we meant: 'fun.

In any case, the episode is don enlightening illustration of the complex give-and-take of language marketing and language politics, not to gay the impact of internet pressure on everyone from Middle schoolers to Middle Eastern despots to greeting-card manufacturers. Nov 1, pm by Dennis Baron. But they did change the lyrics, and despite the apology, the sweater ornament is still available on the Hallmark website, though in a tacit acknowledgment of the controversy over the wording, the web copy now reads, When it comes to Christmas sweaters, gaudy can be good!

The company further " explained " why it chose fun to replace gay: The trend of wearing festively decorated Christmas sweaters to parties is all about fun, and this ornament is intended to play into that, so the planning team decided to say what we meant: 'fun.