A Latte Hate: Calm down over the red cup

By Jahnavi Rao, Staff Reporter
A new pointless, inconsequential event has taken place and caused thousands of people to take up arms about absolutely nothing. Starbucks has released its holiday-themed cup and, surprise, they changed it. It’s not like they have changed the design every year since 1997.
This change has to be taken as a personal injustice and offense. The once completely Christmas-y cups have turned only slightly Christmas-y, with the exclusion of the festive trees and snowflakes in the effort to have, as Jeffrey Fields, Starbucks’ vice president, says, a “more open way to usher in the holidays.”
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Some are calling it a personal attack to Christians around the world, while others, such as Joshua Feuerstein in a Facebook video that has over ten million views, say it’s because Starbucks hates Jesus. The hashtag #MerryChristmasStarbucks has gone viral with millions lamenting over the removal of Christmas. 
My view? They changed the cup because, go figure, millions of people go to Starbucks, and not all of them celebrate Christmas. Starbucks is not saying Christmas is lousy, but rather living up to the true name: the holiday cup. It was never stated as a Christmas cup, only as a way to usher in the holiday season, which is not exclusively Christmas. I never saw any menorahs on the cups, but those of Jewish heritage aren’t trending #HappyHannukahStarbucks on Twitter. I understand the argument that those holidays were never represented on the cup in the first place, so the removal of Christmas from the cups is a different situation. However, it doesn’t excuse people not accepting change. As I said before, these holiday themed cups have been annually launched every year since 1997 with a different design each time. The blank red of these cups do not actually say anything derogatory towards Christmas. Lastly, even if the change of the cups is a product of millennials trying not to be offensive, isn’t that a good thing? It is the ushering in of an age where one religion does not have prevalence.
Jahnavi Rao can be reached at [email protected].