When looking into the recent Porsche ad that involved the removal of the Cristo rei, or Christ the King, statue from a scene in Lisbon, Portugal, one issue that came up is Lidl’s 2017 packaging which involved editing out crosses from Christian churches on the island of Santorini.
Lidl is a Germany-based discount supermarket. It had to apologize after it was savaged on social media for airbrushing out images of Christian crosses from churches on the Greek island of Santorini. That airbrushed image had been used for the packaging of its Greek-themed Eridanous products.
The Eridanous brand included such products as olive oil, Greek food-themed spices, and baklava pastries. The packaging included the famous, domed blue churches of Santorini, but the crosses that top those churches had been edited off of them for the packaging. Particularly at issue was the famous Anastasis Church on Santorini, the blue dome of which is topped by a small, white cross. That is what Lidl edited out.
Lidl had to apologize in a statement released after people found out, saying, “We are sorry for any offence caused by the artwork on our Eridanous range. We can confirm that we will be revising the design as soon as possible.”
Continuing, Lidl admitted that it had made a mistake in designing the product packaging, saying, “We made a mistake in the most recent revision of the product design and are now treating the issue with the highest priority.”
Predictably, the decision led to intense backlash on social media. One commenter, the Daily Mail noted, said, “I’m highly disappointed in a company that is bending over to cater to specific people. Why are you hiding from the history? We are all to learn from history, removing it with photoshop will cause the same mistakes of the past to be done over and over again.”
Another commenter said, “Why have you taken the crosses off the top of Greek churches in your advertising? Is there somebody you will think takes offence? There is. Me, Greeks and many others. I definitely won’t be using you again if you don’t reverse this policy.”
Still another said, “Why are you erasing the reality from a photo? If there were products from Hindu, Sikh, Jewish, or Muslim countries with their symbols depicted on there I wouldn’t have a problem buying them. As a Christian I feel really hurt, discriminated against, upset and disappointed that you have done this, if it is the case I won’t be shopping at your store anymore.”
Yet another said, “How very disappointing to see your marketing team have decided to air brush the crosses from the domes of the Greek Orthodox churches. This is a huge insult to Christians world wide who have identified with the cross since the formation of the early church. I fail to see what you had hoped to accomplish, we will not be shopping at Lidl until the crosses have been restored. Did you think such a change would go unnoticed or did you think people didn’t care enough to complain?”
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