By now you’ve probably heard that Starbucks is waging a “War On Christmas”, though if you’re a right-minded individual you’ve likely decided to stay as far away from that argument as much as you physically can, because no good can ever come from arguing over trivialities on the Internet.
Unfortunately, there exists people such as myself who feel compelled to indulge in the idiocy of others, soaking in the putrid fumes of their hatred and willful ignorance until we become mere husks of humans, shriveled up like a slug bathing in salt after spending too much time watching petty online disputes. It is people such as myself who are left to explain to you exactly why people are angry, and then explain the point of view adopted by the angry peoples’ opponents, before attempting to offer a clear-cut conclusion to the whole debacle in which I tell you who you should be cheering for. However, this time my job is a little more difficult, because when the topic that people are arguing over is Starbucks’ take-away coffee cups, it’s tremendously difficult to give a shit either way.
It seems that humans have argued over so many mundane things that now they’re having to scream at each other over literal plastic cups. The argument stems from many pointing to Starbucks enforcing their “agenda” this year of neutralizing Christmas and no longer making it about Jesus, because they’ve decided to remove the designs previously used on their cups during the Christmas season in favor of a more minimalist design.
Given the vehement reaction from those claiming that Starbucks were trying to take the “Christ out of Christmas”, you’d think that their cups had previously been plastered with pictures of baby Jesus chilling out in his crib and other assorted religious imagery, but in actuality they featured distinctly non-Jesus-related images such as a bauble, a snowflake and a snowman. Let’s take a moment to analyze how each of these things have very little to do with Jesus, or Christianity on the whole:
The bauble
For the uninitiated, baubles are decorations people typically hang on their Christmas tree. As far as I am aware, no one handed Jesus a bauble on December 25th, nor were there any baubles present at the time of his birth.
The snowflake
To my knowledge there aren’t any first-hand accounts of baby Jesus’ birth, but considering it took place in the pretty hot city of Bethlehem, it’s unlikely that anyone would have witnessed any snowflakes encircling the stable in which he was born.
The snowman
Now here’s the design that I can dispute with utmost confidence. While it is unlikely that a bauble or a snowflake were present to witness the birth of Jesus, I can say with 100% certainty that a snowman wouldn’t have been there, despite its prior appearances on Starbucks’ disposable cups and their apparent relevancy in Christianity. A snowman probably wasn’t hanging around behind the Three Wise Men, nor did he follow the star that would lead him to the stable in which Jesus was born, because doing so would have caused him to melt. Unless someone built that snowman in that stable in time for Jesus’ birth, which would have indicated that Mary and Joseph did not know how to prioritize given that she was about to have a baby, then a snowman did not witness Jesus’ birth.
Celebrate the birth of Christ by getting vehemently angry over the design of disposable cups!
So by removing these designs from their Christmas cup, how are Starbucks waging a war upon the holiday? Well, to put it bluntly, they aren’t. Breitbart decided to tell us that the coffee company removing the bauble, snowflake and snowman from the cup is “EMBLEMATIC OF THE CHRISTIAN CULTURE CLEANSING OF THE WEST,” because as we all know Christmas is not about goodwill to all men or any of that nonsense, but rather promotional campaigns from tax-evading mega corporations.
Now don’t get me wrong, I agree that these plain red cups look about as shit as you’d expect a plain red cup to look, but unlike Breitbart I do not think that we are “subliminally being told/reminded that this time of the year is no longer about Christmas,” nor do I think that our culture now actually perceives saying “Merry Christmas” to one another as “offensive,” something which the Breitbart report also suggests. In fact, rather than being “offensive,” I’d argue that Christmas is now being celebrated far longer than it ever has been. Christmas decorations begin lining stores in early November, you can hear festive music being bellowed out by radio DJs earlier into the year than ever before, and companies continue to capitalize on their most lucrative time of the year by dragging the holiday out far longer than December 25th.
You may argue that Christmas isn’t supposed to be about these mega corporations and their profits, and you’d be right – but then why are so many Christians angry about this whole Starbucks red solo cup thing? When the origin of the holiday was explained to me as a kid, my parents must have missed out the part where Mary took a sip of her Vanilla Bean Crème Frappuccino® in order to stay hydrated during childbirth.
