Starbucks has recently come under fire due to its cup design of the holiday season. The uproar surrounds this year’s holiday cup that displays a more simplistic design of a bold red that fades into a deeper cranberry. The problem arose when some Christians claimed that Starbucks is taking Christ out of Christmas. I have followed many different opinions on the subject matter, but Starbucks has not doing anything wrong.
The past years have seen a plethora of designs for the holiday season, including a sledding polar bear, the winking snowman and artsy hand painted snowflakes. Somewhere along the line some people have come to accept these designs as a central icon of Christmas. “Starbucks removed Christmas from their cups because they hate Jesus,” former Arizona television evangelist Joshua Feuerstein said, who has more than 1.8 million Facebook followers. Now I do not know how Feuerstein grew up, but I do not remember breaking out the Christmas decorations and kneeling before a statue of Santa and a snowflake.
Starbucks has always offered a wide array of Christmas inspired merchandise. These include its special Christmas Blend coffee ornaments, holiday-themed gift cards, Christmas music and even advent calendars. Even celebrities have weighed in on the situation. In a bid to win more conservative Republicans, Donald Trump said, “No more ‘Merry Christmas’ at Starbucks… Maybe we should boycott Starbucks.” He goes on to mention how Starbucks is a major business at his Trump Tower in New York then ends by stating he just does not care about the situation. Demi Lovato also chimed in asking “why do we care this much about a cup?” Most of the hype about the cup stems from people defending Starbucks. “In the past we have told stories with our holiday cups designs,… this year we wanted to usher in the holidays with a purity of design that welcomes all of our stories,” Jeffrey Fields, Starbucks vice president of Design and Content said.
Is it possible this whole controversy was created by Starbucks as a publicity stunt? There have been multiple hashtags created for this event, including #ItsJustACup, which has been used more than 4,400 times in one week. Along with that, Starbuck’s name has been mentioned more than 474,000 times and the red cup more than 61,000 times, according to CNBC. How can you be mad at a corporation and then tell your followers to say their name is ‘Merry Christmas’ so to baristas have to write it on the cups? As such what Joshua Feuerstein did? After Feuerstein’s video, Starbucks saw a significant increase in publicity and any exposure is good exposure. This is especially true if your form of protest is telling fellow protesters to buy more product and give the company even more money.
The world may never know what the true motive behind the red cup was and to everyone it may mean something different. I believe it to all be fabricated by Starbucks to do exactly what happened. And if such is the case, then it worked very well as stats have shown. Maybe this will blow over in a week or maybe it will become the heated debate of this coming presidential race.
