By JOE RONCA
Staff Writer
I never thought that I’d have to say this, but apparently using a red cup is anti-Christian. You heard that right, Starbucks decision to use a red cup this holiday season is supposedly anti-Christmas to some.
Before I go any further, let me explain why this is so controversial. Every year, Starbucks releases a Christmas-themed cup around this time in order to be festive and celebrate the holiday. Typically, the cups provided by Starbucks during Christmastime feature symbols such as snowflakes and Christmas trees.
However, this year the favorite coffee chain of those writing screenplays committed sacrilege by passing out simple, unadorned red cups. At least, that’s what some Christians are claiming.
The whole uproar over these cups started with a man named Joshua Feurstein. Feurstein, who claims to be a prominent social media personality, is a former pastor. I do not know how one becomes a former pastor, but Feurstein managed to pull it off.
Feurstein posted a video onto YouTube where he ranted for several minutes about how Starbucks is anti-Christian, due to using red cups this holiday season. The ex-pastor even at one point said that Starbucks is using the red cups because “they hate Jesus.”
This video soon went viral, and at last count has been viewed over ten million times. The video has sparked a massive firestorm of criticism directed at Starbucks by Evangelical Christians.
There have even been calls for a boycott against the world’s largest chain of coffee shops. These calls have been led by one Republican candidate for the presidency. That candidate is, of course, the one and only Donald Trump. That’s all that really needs to be said about the criticism for one to determine how frivolous it is. Yet alas, I continue.
The use of red cups by the Starbucks chain is seen by some on the right as evidence of the so-called “War on Christmas” that has supposedly been taking place in this country for decades. It began with local governments around the country re-naming their annual publically-displayed Christmas trees to the awkward sounding “holiday tree” moniker.
The controversy intensified as retailers such as Walmart and Sears stopped using the word “Christmas” in their advertising and even began to rename their Christmas trees as well. One hilarious incident occurred in the winter of 2007, when Lowe’s sold Christmas trees that had been renamed “family trees.”
I have no idea why Lowe’s would even sell something called a “family tree” in the first place. I mean, we all know that it is really a Christmas tree anyways. Lowe’s did not just pull a fast one on us by changing the name. Everyone still knew that it was a Christmas tree.
Nevertheless, Lowe’s sold their “family trees,” and the religious Right in this country jumped all over them for it. The “War on Christmas” is heavily covered every year on FOX News, especially by commentator Bill O’Reilly.
Now, I do not mind FOX News, but I do have issues with Bill O’Reilly. It is a bit of a paradox, in fact, because I typically tend to agree with what O’Reilly has to say. The problem is that all his program does is highlight salacious stories that typically do not matter very much in the grand scheme of things.
The so-called “War on Christmas” is a perfect example of this behavior. In the grand scheme of things, does calling a Christmas tree a “family tree” ruin anyone’s life? The answer is a plain no. Is it pointless and vain to do so? Yes.
That being said, it is something that really should not matter at this point. I have one thing to say to all those ultra-religious Christians who believe that calling a Christmas tree a “family tree” or using a simple red cup amounts to an abandonment of Christian values: Christmas is not really a Christian holiday anymore.
That’s right. I said it. The way Christmas is celebrated today in the United States has almost nothing to do with the original holiday that celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ.
Today’s American Christmas typically doesn’t involve prayer and staying up for midnight mass; instead, it involves leaving out milk and cookies and waking up at an unreasonably early time for a day off just to rush into the living room and tear open wrapped presents like a hungry animal.
In short, Christmas as practiced by most Americans does not celebrate Christ, but America’s real God: money. An American Christmas is a purely secular event that celebrates consumerism and needless overconsumption.
I am not saying that we should not splurge occasionally or accumulate wealth, I’m just saying that we shouldn’t try to call it Christian. It is not by any means Christian. Jesus taught that a person should be generous with their wealth if they already have enough to live and that people should live a life that is comfortable, but not luxurious.
Christmas as practiced today does not embody these teachings. In fact, last time I checked it was not snowing in Bethlehem, and Jesus did not die on the cross so your kid can get the new “Call of Duty” installment.
This obviously applies to the fracas taking place over red cups at Starbucks. The idea that Starbucks “hates Jesus” is ludicrous, to put it mildly.
Before Starbucks switched to plain red, its holiday cups featured snowflakes and the words “Merry Christmas.” First off, if Starbucks was trying to stop referencing the word “Christmas,” they have done a poor job of doing so, since they still sell gift cards that say ‘Merry Christmas’ in bold letters.
Secondly, snowflakes and Christmas trees have nothing to do with the Christian celebration of Christmas. They are symbols of the secular consumerist Christmas that I discussed previously.
In other words: don’t get so mad, Evangelicals. The world didn’t end just because a coffee chain based out of Seattle, hardly a bastion of the Bible Belt anyways, removed snowflakes from their cups. Snowflakes have nothing to do with Jesus or Christmas. They just do not symbolize the holiday designed to celebrate Christ’s birth. They simply symbolize a different holiday, celebrated on the same date on the calendar.
I consider myself a Christian, so I would get offended if Starbucks was anti-Jesus, but they are not and they are not even against the secular Christmas that Americans celebrate. They simply want to foster an environment where non-Christians feel comfortable.
I have never met a non-Christian who objects to public displays of Christmas, so I think it is pointless, but it is nothing to go ballistic over. In fact, I think that the red cups are pretty aesthetically pleasing.
If you want to say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays” and call a Christmas tree a Christmas tree, then by all means, be my guest. In fact, I do both things myself.
However, do not mistake people who say “Happy Holidays” or, God forbid, pass out red cups in November, for anti-Christian zealots. They simply do not have any feelings one way on the other on the subject of Christmas. And hey, it’s not even really a Christian holiday anymore anyway.
If you are trying to find genuine anti-Christian zealots to scream at, rant about ISIS, not the executives who run Starbucks’s caffeine-based empire.
