If you have been to a Starbucks recently, you may have noticed the arrival of the usual Christmas-season trappings—things like slightly different paper cups, which is very important if you love Jesus or just want a few bright colors around to help us all stave off seasonal affective disorder. But what’s this? Past cups had things like reindeer on them, and this year’s design is more minimalist, with no reindeer? Time for a gigantic, bug-eyed freakout.
Starbucks said it removed "symbols of the season" used in the past, which have included reindeer and ornaments, in favor of a simple, two-toned red cup.
This design decision has caused a certain set of deeply Christian insane people to go abso-tutely over the deep end, people like “social media personality” and “public figure” (cough) Joshua Feuerstein, a former pastor who it appears now spends his time having very important social media personality fits about things.
To wit:
He posted a video to Facebook on November 5 that went viral. Feuerstein criticizes Starbucks for removing "Christmas from their cups because they hate Jesus."
That would be the most likely explanation. Overheard in the Starbucks home office: “Christmas is coming up, but I don’t think we’ve really done enough to express our hatred of Jesus in past years.”
”Hmm. Remove the reindeer.”
Feuerstein encouraged customers to say "Merry Christmas" instead of their names in order to "trick" baristas into writing the phrase on the cup. He said to use "#MerryChristmasStarbucks" to post photos online.
And yes, it’s become a thing. The video has over 10 million views; twitchy people who probably do not really need any more caffeine in them in the first place have been changing their coffee-time names to “Merry Christmas” in order to force the cruel baristas to say “Merry Christmas,” burning their low-wage tongues and teaching them a lesson about working for a company that’s not willing to draw a picture of one goddamn reindeer on their seasonal landfill filler. Take that, person who has absolutely no say in top-level graphic design decisions made by their corporate headquarters.
Some of you longtime followers of the War on Christmas might have noticed an oddity here. Advocates of the theory that there is a War on Christmas generally see an offensive waged by secular liberal forces who want to destroy Christianity via the devious plan of mentioning that not all Americans are Christian, thus causing all good Christians to melt down into puddles like the Wicked Witch of the West while the sneaky atheists and Jews and Muslims and all those other even more unmentionable people step over those puddles to grab the best holiday-season deals from the big box stores.
These people usually get upset that Christmas is not being celebrated in the proper Jesus-laden fashion, and one of their frequent complaints is that the holiday continues to be taken over by Santaists, people who put up decorations with holly and reindeers and fat men in polar leisurewear to take our minds off the real reason for the season—large public nativity displays. Defending the graphical depiction of reindeer is not, generally, where they would prefer their efforts lie.
But you take what work you can get, in the War on the War on Christmas. Having a very public freakout over an insulated paper cup that you feel has personally insulted you is as close to the true Christmas spirit as you can get, after all—and if you can’t yell about the insulated paper cups, then how will people learn of your love for God?