Starbucks tasty, but telling cup

So, I’m late to this fray, but I figured I would pick up on it anyway.
Here’s the drift, which I didn’t see until mid-way through Monday’s busy workday.
Starbucks, my expensive, but loved home away from Coushatta home (as there is none here), has changed its red cups for the holiday season.
Last week, the coffee giant unveiled the design of this year’s cups, which have become something of a Starbucks tradition. The company’s designers went for a minimalist look “with a bright poppy color on top that shades into a darker cranberry below.”
“We have anchored the design with the classic Starbucks holiday red that is bright and exciting,” said Jeffrey Fields, Starbucks vice president of design and content. “The ombré creates a distinctive dimension, fluidity and weightedness.”
Now, let’s lay aside the fact I have no idea what that means, the ombre’, fluidity and weightedness I mean, there was something left off the cup – and I’m not making this up.
There are no holiday symbols.
The cup is as red as Santa’s nose, but there is nothing there to suggest that it is being done for Christmas.
And all heaven broke loose.
Breibart News tweets: Starbucks Red Cups have erased any sense of Christmas, after years of, at the very least, upholding a capitalistic, post-Victorian image of the Christian holiday.
Again, I’m not making this up.
Facebook images sprouted like those noted Christian symbols of horns on a Reindeer: Starbucks goes red on All Christmas Cups.
The camps broke into two or three. On one side there were the Christians who saw this as someone robbing them of their high-priced, but wonderfully tasting Lattes.
Leah tweeted, “Since you are running away from Christianity, I’m running from you.”
On the other side were the pagan, heathen coffee swilling mobs who could care less.
Mark tweeted, “Starbucks is rounding Christians up into coffee death camps and making them drink Pagan Spice Lattes.
In the middle were the Christians, who were swilling their high-priced but wonderfully tasting Lattes, who could care less.
(My favorite) Adam tweeted, “Starbucks took Merry Christmas off their cups because of Christ; so tell them your name is Merry Christmas and they’ll have to put it on the cup.
And God simply laughed.
Or cried.
Or both.
The “attack on Christmas” starts every year about this time, doesn’t it. The Christmas decorations, which have little to do with honoring a child who was born to give his life for our own stupidity, er, sin, start to come out and the next thing you know, someone is taking something off a building in downtown Americana and we think we have to do something (we Evangelicals, which I still think of myself as), instead of simply going on loving and doing whatever we want in the name of Christ.
I didn’t even know Starbucks had a tradition, though the Spice Latte was/is starting to be part of my own once I travel the 40 miles to play $11 or $12 for two of those babies when I can.
I guess the bottom line for all this is Starbucks is a private business that can do whatever the heck it wants. You are able to do the same. Don’t buy or buy, the issues doesn’t change.
We’ve got far bigger pressing issues than red cups. I think we might be able to agree on that.
They really are rounding up Christians in foreign lands and they are really killing them and all this mess we get into doesn’t help them one dang bit.
That is what angers me.
I long for the days when our cups ranneth over with love.
Or perhaps they never have and that’s just a tradition of mine.
Billy Turner is a pastor of the United Methodist denomination and a retired journalist.