“I said no milk! What are you trying to do, infringe on my beliefs?” asked one angry customer.
Photo by: Jessica Ma
The greatly anticipated annual designs for Starbucks’ 2018 holiday cups have finally arrived, and this year, they reportedly feature multiple patterns. Hoping to skirt controversy, Starbucks released a variety of designs for their cups, including one with wide vertical stripes of different shades of red and white, another with a green argyle pattern covered with stars, one with red pentagrams on a black background with “Hail Satan” inscribed along the cup, and a dozen other cup designs.
When asked about the reason behind having multiple designs for their holiday cups, Chief Executive Officer of Starbucks Kevin Johnson answered, “We kept getting flak for not including the right things on holiday cups over the past few years, and it seemed like whenever we would switch up the designs, we just ended up angering a different group. So this year, we’re releasing 15 different cup designs to appease everyone from Christians to Satanists to Steven from accounting who really likes the color green and
argyle patterns.”
Among the 15 cup designs released, one was simply solid red with the word “Christmas” written in big, green letters that wrapped around the cup. The company hopes that this will finally end any accusations that claim they are waging a war on Christmas. Despite their best efforts in avoiding controversy, multiple groups have chimed in to criticize Starbucks for marginalizing and offending them. Atheists, angered that they “lost the War on Christmas,” were one of the most vocal groups against the new Starbucks holiday cup designs. Kathleen Johnson, the Vice President of the American Atheists Organization, lamented over this defeat, stating, “We’ve spent so much time and money over the past few years towards destroying Christmas and finally defeat the Christians, but these new Starbucks cups have utterly defeated us.”
To combat what she calls “the War on the War on Christmas,” Johnson pleaded that all atheists boycott Starbucks and their anti-anti-religious agenda. However, some atheists, like Barry Yates, were not at all angered by this, tweeting: “im red green colorblind so i cant even see that new cup. its just a blob to me so as far as im concerned were still winning the war on xmas”
However, evangelical Christians were not overjoyed with these new cups, either. Christine Hopkins, an avid churchgoer, noted, “The old Starbucks cups used to say ‘Merry Christmas!’ twice. These new cups only use the word ‘Christmas’ once. It’s just not what Jesus would have wanted.”
Others in her congregation shared the same sentiment, noting that the reduced number of times “Christmas” was written on these cups is tantamount to religious persecution.
When asked about how the new cup is supposed to appeal to Satanists, Hopkins cheerily replied, “I don’t mind it at all. It’s 2018. We have to learn to be inclusive and accepting of other people and their beliefs! Like my pastor has always said, ‘I believe that Satan and Jesus can peacefully coexist both in this universe and on our Starbucks cups.’”
