The latest liberal holiday season sacrilege is raising the hackles of traditionalists in America. Starbucks, the overpriced Seattle based coffee chain that has spread across the fruited plain like a mutant strain of kudzu has eliminated their standard seasonal drink cups. In place of the old beverage containers that regularly featured reindeer, snowflakes and other festive decorations is a plain cup in resplendent red. The corporation’s abandonment of all things even remotely related to – GASP – Christmas is another effort to appease an increasingly thin-skinned, easily offended and bitchy segment of the population. These people insist on bleeding as much joy as possible out of the festive holiday season and the bean counters at Starbucks have obviously decided that it is a winner as a marketing strategy to their latte quaffing customers.

CNN Money reports that “Starbucks’ plain red holiday cups stir up controversy”:

This year’s holiday season red cups at Starbucks have stirred up critics who accuse the company of waging a war on Christmas.

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.

When the cups rolled out in late October, Starbucks (SBUX) vice president Jeffrey Fields said the company “wanted to usher in the holidays with a purity of design that welcomes all of our stories.”
Joshua Feuerstein, a former pastor who calls himself a “social media personality,” took exception.
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.”

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.

In an email with CNNMoney on Sunday, Feuerstein noted that his video has had more than 10 million views.

“I think Starbucks has gotten the message that the Christian majority in this country has awakened and are demanding that our voice be heard,” he wrote.

It is a sad sign of the times of rigidly enforced political correctness and thought crimes that continue to show that Orwell was indeed an optimist. But Starbucks’ rolling out of their new fire engine red cups is less about the corporation hating on Jesus than it is one more step in the incremental removal of Christ from Christmas. You see here in the land of the once free, any religious aspects of Christmas have been gradually supplanted by the secular commercialization of the holiday and the accompanying pagan rituals of greed. Black Friday – now expanded to have devoured most of Thanksgiving – is the make or break sales day for big retailers and spending quality time with family is of less importance than going to the shopping mall mosh pit or getting stomped by rampaging hordes at the door buster sales at big box stores.

“Merry Christmas” has been replaced by the bland and all-inclusive “Happy Holidays” so as to not alienate sensitive shoppers and now Starbucks is going that extra mile by welcoming “all of our stories” with their bereft new red cups. It is tough for many to understand this but in 21st century America Jesus Christ has long been relegated to playing second banana to Santa Claus and the currency of the season is not frankincense and muir but rather Visa and Mastercard. While the debates continue to rage over the so-called “war on Christmas” the cash register bells ring and the usurious big banks and credit card companies sing Joy to the World.

Starbucks is catching some flak from culture warriors right now but in doing so is only going to sell more of their pricey Peppermint Mochas and Gingerbread Lattes to those who scoff at tradition and have no use for religion in an increasingly secularized America.