At best, Target has learned only part of its lesson from this year's conservative customer boycott.
According to End Wokeness -- a prominent conservative account with more than 1.8 million followers on the social media platform X -- the Minnesota-based corporate retail giant now offers woke Christmas decorations, including a black Santa Claus in a wheelchair and a figurine sporting both a "pride" hat and a "pride" flag.
"Target outdid itself this year for Christmas," End Wokeness posted.
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Conservative podcaster Tim Pool confirmed that Target has, in fact, made "Santa in Wheelchair" available for purchase.
"[O]mg its real," Pool wrote.
omg its real https://t.co/yqjBV2Gk6b pic.twitter.com/VbTd1CoLQR
— Tim Pool (@Timcast) November 15, 2023
Thanks to "pride"-themed merchandise rolled out ahead of June's "pride" month, Target suffered a substantial decline in revenue.
Thus, social media users seemed flabbergasted that the company had not mended its woke ways.
"Wow. Just wow. You would think they would have learned from the last time. When will companies finally start to realize it? Go woke go broke!" one X user wrote.
"They are trying really hard to bankrupt themselves," another user added.
Much of the earlier backlash stemmed from the company's "pride" apparel for children, including clothes that promoted "transgender" identities.
"We talking about the same target that went after kids with tuck friendly suits, right?" another user stated.
If we must find a silver lining here, at least the company did not specifically promote sexual-themed Christmas merchandise for children, though one could argue that a "pride" figurine for a holiday that features a gift-giving tradition primarily geared toward children comes awfully close.
The core problem, however, runs far deeper.
At Christmas, Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, who taught us that we must surrender our own lives -- that is, our self-will -- in order to find eternal life with the God of love.
Christianity and wokeness, therefore, cannot be reconciled, for the latter has nothing to do with love. Distilled to its ugly essence, wokeness means narcissism. And the ultimate manifestation of narcissism is pride.
In "Mere Christianity" (1952), legendary Christian author C.S. Lewis called pride "The Great Sin."
"Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind," Lewis wrote.
Thus, wokeness celebrates pride because the woke mind, above all else, worships itself.
To illustrate, consider the following confused social media post, which referred to "Santa in Wheelchair":
"Being kind to kids with disabilities means being woke now? The far right," one X user sarcastically wrote.
Now, of course we know that being kind to kids with disabilities is a good thing. And we have any number of ways to demonstrate such kindness.
The woke mind, however, thinks not of actual kids with actual disabilities. When it sees the black Santa in a wheelchair, it thinks only of its own profound goodness. "Am I not a wonderful person for caring about black people, children with disabilities and especially black children with disabilities?" the woke mind asks itself. Perhaps it even writes a social media post about how much it cares. Having done this, it moves along and seeks fresh sources of self-congratulation.
This is not a description of what the woke mind might choose to do; it simply explains what wokeness is. When the woke mind stops thinking of its own presumed moral goodness, it ceases to be woke.
At that point, it takes a crucial step toward something outside of itself.
Thus, to a certain extent we might say that Christmas -- and Christianity itself -- begins where wokeness ends.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
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