By Drew Bergen (Contributor) – Email
I’m sure we’ve all heard about it by now: Starbucks decided not to wish you a merry Christmas through their cups, and people got mad. In fact, one may say a lot of people got mad based on how much publicity this got, right?
Well, it can’t be said for certain exactly how many people got mad. But I can tell you how this all happened. One day, Starbucks decided, “Hey, let’s just do red cups this year instead of any decorations. I mean, it saves money on ink, and people are just going to put sleeves over the cup anyways.” Then, one guy noticed, and got angry enough to post a video on Facebook that got shared around a lot. Again, I can’t say how many people agree with them, but from the media I’ve seen, I believe I can safely say that the percentage of the population making fun of this situation eclipses the percentage of those who actually agree.
Either way, this is something neither Christians nor anyone else should be giving the time of day. Practically everyone is going to be slipping a sleeve over the cup anyway, and so their only exposure to it is when the barista hands it to them; they get a nice sparkly sense of holiday spirit, and then they forget about it ten seconds later. It’s insignificant, and speaking as a Christian, we don’t need companies like Starbucks acknowledging the holiday like that.
I find it obnoxious that people will latch onto these silly little things and not let them go. I’m one of those people that get annoyed by these silly, popular news stories that get way more attention than they should as a consequence of the era of Facebook. But unfortunately for anyone who’s sick of seeing so much about this, there’s a good chance this topic is going to remain in your newsfeed for a while because it’s so silly.
I don’t care if cups wish me merry Christmas or not, and neither should anyone. These are cups for a chain of coffee shops; Starbucks is free to put whatever they want on them, and whether the cups wish you a Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, or Happy Hanukkah, it will not affect anyone. The world will not come to an end.
