Mall's Politically Correct Christmas Display Taken down after Backlash

A Long Island mall has faced a lot of social media backlash over their "politically correct" Christmas display for Santa this year.

Shoppers became outraged over the all-white, "non-offensive," non-traditional Christmas decorated photo place for Santa to sit on. Social media campaigns threatened to boycott the mall and its sterilized looking Christmas decorations.

The Roosevelt Field Mall in New York decided to go against its usual holiday village themed Santa display and went with a winter, glacier themed display.

Mall patrons who first saw the display thought it looked more futuristic than holiday friendly. One mall patron said that when she spoke to management, they said they changed the display "in order to not offend anyone."

The Roosevelt Field Mall is run by Simon Malls, who also run the SouthPark Mall in North Carolina. The SouthPark Mall also has a glacial Santa display instead of the traditional Christmas Santa display.

Many people online and in the mall were asking for a boycott of the Santa display, until the normal display went back up. Mall officials did put up a tree after the backlash, but the tree is smaller than the normal one seen with the Christmas display.

Simon Malls also released a statement regarding the glacial themed Santa display, saying the cutting edge arctic-inspired artistic design was supposed to "illuminate every imagination." The display was also supposed to have interactive stations that children could play with while waiting for Santa, as well as a simulation of the Aurora Borealis.

After all the scathing reviews and online calls for a boycott of Simon malls using the glacial display, the malls began removing the arctic displays. However, many are saying the new setups are not that much better. The strange white "pod" has been removed, and replaced with red curtains, trees and some lights.

Simon Malls released another statement regarding the controversy:

We've listened to our shopper feedback the last few days and the idea that we eliminated Christmas trees in order to "...
Posted by Roosevelt Field on Saturday, November 7, 2015

Hopefully they will get the display together in time for the holidays.