Living Outside The Lines: Starbucks & The Satan Sippers

By, Becky J Miller

Christmas Season 2015 Starbucks found themselves in the midst of a social media outcry. What caused the uproar, you ask? Were they putting arsenic in their coffee? No. Did coffee prices double overnight? Nope.  Did they change operating hours to longer meet the demands of early morning commuters?  Negative.  The hoopla was over, of all things, their holiday cups! 

Miriam Webster offers this definition for a cup; a small round container that often has a handle and that is used for drinking liquids (such as tea and coffee).  Where in this definition does Mr. Webster imply a cup should become the instigator of a fierce and quite dramatic battle?  Yeah, I don’t see either.  It’s a cup, people; an amoral holder of liquids.

In the midst of the crisis last year, Ellen DeGeneres did a monologue on the topic.  If you somehow missed it, check it out here: 

She opens the oration explaining the issue; Starbucks’ 2015 holiday cup, which was plain red, caused many people to feel it was anti-Christmas because it lacked Santa’s sleigh, snowflakes and elves, “you know, all the things you find in the Bible.”  In her words, “it might as well have been called a Satan sipper.”

Thankfully, the world and Starbucks both survived the 2015 Holiday Cup Apocalypse, but brace yourselves for the 2016 Christmas Season is upon us, and big surprise, the Drama of the Cups has arrived once again. 

The first week of November Starbucks rolled out a new green cup.  The cup features an illustration by Shogo Ota showing the faces of more than a hundred people, drawn with a single continuous line.  According to Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, “During a divisive time in our country, Starbucks wanted to create a symbol of unity as a reminder of our shared values, and the need to be good to each other.” http://finance.yahoo.com/news/furious-customers-accusing-starbucks-political-204800852.html

Immediately after the cups made their appearance, the nation was once again all a frenzy. The pendulum swings from those convinced the cups are some sort of political brainwashing to disappointment that this year’s “holiday cup” is green, not red, because green is somehow “less festive” than red. 

Lord, help us.  How an inanimate object could be capable of political brainwashing is beyond me.  If a picture on a cup is clever enough to change someone’s mind on what they value and believe, then it would stand to reason that those values were not firmly held, to begin with.  P.S. the green cup isn’t the holiday design; that closely guarded motif was not yet released at the time of this column’s writing; however, by the time of its publication, the whole world will know.

Frankly, the color/design on my coffee cup matters little to me.  I actually think the green cup is thought provoking.  Differences aside, don’t most of us aspire to live in harmony with our fellow man?  Whether we agree on the issues or not, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Greek, Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Liberal, Heterosexual or Transgender, we are all connected and it seems ridiculous to allow a consumable that ends up in the trash dump to bring such division. 

This holiday season, I choose to enjoy my Starbucks, no matter the cup design, and if others do not, well, although I may disagree with their opinion, I respectively submit, it is their right to find coffee from another source. 

Until Next Time,

Becky J Miller

“Warrior Princess”