In the beginning, there was a paper coffee cup – bright red on top, shading to a darker cranberry below. That much seems beyond doubt.
But the brew-haha of supposed outrage that has spilled from it since the Starbucks coffee chain served up what looked, at first glance, like a seasonal throwaway, is increasingly hard to figure.
A week ago, a self-described evangelist named Joshua Feuerstein, who lives outside Phoenix, posted a video on Facebook criticizing Starbucks for trying to “take Christ and Christmas” out of the holiday by designing cups devoid of seasonal symbols. Ever since, controversy – or, at least, lots and lots of comment – has ricocheted around the Internet, taken as evidence that people were either similarly upset, or upset that others were upset.
Feuerstein’s video has garnered millions of views, and has been pronounced by pundits as the latest trope in longstanding complaints by some religious conservatives that American companies, government officials and others are waging a “War on Christmas.”
Indeed, thousands of people have sounded off on Twitter and other social networks, many appending the “#MerryChristmasStarbucks” meme that Feuerstein coined for what he urged could be a movement to reassert the holiday’s rightful spot in the American marketplace.