Christmas is coming. So are Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Bodhi Day, Yalda, Yule, and more. However, the holiday-themed coffee cups that Christmas junkies await every year from Starbucks are lacking apparent flair, and Christian caffeine addicts are angry.
There is a social media war to “Keep Christ in Christmas,” fought by Christian evangelists revolting against the simple red and green design of this year’s Starbucks cups. Despite a long history of snowflakes and tree ornaments on their cups, Starbucks has never had a holiday cup that explicitly refers to Jesus Christ or Christianity.
The response that Starbucks has made to this social media conflict explained that their intention is to be “inclusive” and provide a blank slate for people to tell their own stories on a minimally designed cup. The cup, Starbucks claims, is meant to “welcome customers from all backgrounds and religions.”
In response to the war waged on social media by a particularly angry group within modern American Christianity, Ellen DeGeneres said, “The old cups had snowflakes and Santa’s sleigh and elves. You know, all the things from the Bible.”
But even if Starbucks had carried J.C’s face in the past and chose this year to drop the religious label, what does it mean when a culture prioritizes secular coffee cups as an injustice to rail against before other problems that Christian values might hope to mend, like war and torture, and economic downfall?
Many people, both religious and secular, are concerned with the future of religious faith and morality that this absurd reaction to coffee cups may predict. Rev. Emily C. Heath of the Huffington Post is appalled that many Christians have attached their faith to consumer culture, and that they are misdirecting their energy towards Christmas themed coffee cups before Thanksgiving has even arrived.
Heath believes that this controversy on social media may be a red flag for the fragility of Christian faith in a culture that confuses religious values with consumerism.
“I think this is a little ridiculous,” Heath stated. “Because, Christians, I promise you that Starbucks red cups are not going to destroy the Christian faith. Seriously, the Roman Empire couldn’t do it, and they could kill you with lions.”
This is the kind of obsessive consumerism that leaves Black Friday shoppers trampled in Wal-Mart. Whether you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Atheist, it is not a huge leap to suggest that consumerism is a fairly ubiquitous modern day religion—except that community and compassion is eerily absent from our touch screen bibles.
So, perhaps we should focus instead on the inclusiveness that such a recognizable company as Starbucks is trying to express with simply designed coffee cups.
The recent tragedies in Paris, Beirut, and Baghdad have shown that the expression and exploitation of religious fundamentalism can terrorize the world. Rather than loudly complaining on social media about the absence of Christian iconography on cups that are held in many non-Christian hands, be thankful for the privilege to walk down a snowy sidewalk carrying a warm red and green coffee cup this winter during such a tumultuous time in human history.
Ruby Samuels
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