Detail from a family picture taken on Black Friday 2007 in a frigid Central Park.
When I met Howard Duvall at Starbucks the other day, I was delighted to see that they’d started using the red holiday cups. I have a lot of pleasant associations with that annual sign of the season, such as the time three of my kids and I stayed warm with such cups on a Black Friday visit to a bitterly cold New York (see above).
Some people, however, see the cups’ arrival as an opportunity to increase the amount of division in the world:
Starbucks has come under fire from some Christians who say the company isn’t repping hard enough for Jesus on its recent understated holiday cups. The problem? Political correctness, according to one evangelical.
“I think in the age of political correctness we become so open-minded our brains have literally fallen out of our head,” Joshua Feuerstein said in a widely viewed anti-Starbucks rant on Facebook titled “Starbucks REMOVED CHRISTMAS from their cups because they hate Jesus.” “Do you realize that Starbucks wanted to take Christ and Christmas off of their brand new cups? That’s why they’re just plain red.”…
Everyone has his or her peeves. Here’s one of mine…
Why on Earth would I expect to see “Christmas” on a coffee cup on Guy Fawkes Day? That’s more than three weeks before Advent even starts, much less Christmas. You want to complain about Christmas being underplayed, get back to me sometime between Dec. 25 and the Feast of the Epiphany.
When I get a red cup on Nov. 5, it really is a holiday cup, since it will span the period that includes our first experiences of cold weather, Thanksgiving, Advent and Christmas. It’s about celebrating a season — you know, the holiday season, and yeah, that includes Hanukkah. Maybe New Year’s, too (I’m not clear on when they stop using the cups).
If your excuse for protesting is that you are a Christian, how about checking out a liturgical calendar sometime? Yeah, I know, not every Christian is in a liturgical church, but come on — just how early do you want the Merry Christmases to start?
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So it’s ok to use Jesus’ name to promote whatever you’re trying to sell, as long as the words “Jesus” or “Christ” are prominent? Somehow, this idea doesn’t square with my understanding of being a follower of his. I can see it now: Two stores who sell the same or similar items start ad campaigns for Christmas–something like ‘It’s CHRISTmas. We believe in JESUS. So JESUS loves us more than our competitor. Come to our store, where JESUS is found. We put the CHRIST in CHRISTmas where He belongs!
WWJD?
What would Jesus drink?
Plain, unadorned, black coffee, I like to think. But then we’re always trying to redefine God in our own images, aren’t we?
Actually, the true answer is “wine.” That, and water…
I think a lot of Lutherans think Marty should not have cut back the sacraments to just two. The Sacrament of the Coffee Hour, with Bach’s Coffee Cantata as it’s musical inspiration…..
Hear, Hear!! As a one-time Presbyterian Worship Committee Chair, I’ve long thought that the real “war” was on Advent–a season that, if you pay any attention to such things, is very, VERY different from Christmas. It’s not about the warm and cuddlies, the baby and the cute animals. It’s about darkness and the coming light, it’s about the fulfilment of prophecy (which may bring joy or dread or both at once). It’s about a teenage girl being visited by a strange guy and being told something that shocks her out of her mind (See Rossetti’s version of the Annunciation; some years ago I turned a corner at the Tate and was knocked on my heels). It’s the vision of Mary in the Magnificat that the world will be turned upside down, and in a way likely not to us privileged Presbies’ liking. It’s stronge, it’s unsettling, and knocks our comfortable assumptions about our faith into a cocked hat. Which, I think is why it’s been banished to the mall stockrooms.
That painting’s a bit of a mind-blower. I’m impressed, but I’m not sure I like it, and often I do like the pre-Raphaelites. I think maybe I like that style better when applied to Arthurian legend than to religious themes. It’s so trippy, melodramatic and overstated…
Have you ever studied the Henry Tanner version of the Annunciation below? I was introduced to it at a leadership retreat last year conducted by the Sisters of Charity. Our moderator showed it to us (or maybe showed us a portion of it, without the heavenly light at the left) and asked us to talk about what we thought was going on in the picture. It was interesting.
I think maybe I like the Tanner better than the Rossetti….
The pre-Raphaelites really had a thing about red hair, didn’t they? I particularly like this Millais study of a young Rebekah Brooks.
Just kidding. Rebekah Brooks’ hair is actually WAY more dramatic and impressive…
I think the Pre-Raphaelites were riffing on Titian and the other Italains who celebrated red hair, plus red hair is associated with Celts and mysticism.
Rebekah Brooks certainly has that look about her — like Queen Boadicea…
I don’t think the answer is that the PreRaphaelites were “riffing” on Titian, a literal post-Raphaelite. You won’t find a lot of commonality between the sumptuous theatricality of Titian and the truth to nature of the PreRaphs. The model for Rossetti’s _Annunciation_ is Elizabeth Siddal, his wife. She happened to have red hair, which per their credo he would paint as he saw it. Same model in Millais’s famous _Ophelia_ in the river.
Rossetti did have another model (Alexa Wilding) who had flaming red hair, but probably his most well-known model was a brunette (Jane Burden Morris), and his other prominent model was a blonde.
I think the reason we see “so many redheads” in PreRaphaelite art is that _we_ modern viewers like those, so they are the ones we see all the time on book covers and in calendars, etc.
Hey, Chris, didn’t you attend that big pre-Raphaelite show they had at the Ashmolean in 2010? How was it?
It was just before we visited Oxford, but they had some examples of the genre in their permanent collection, so at least we got to see those…
It was pretty good! It had a lot of landscapes and some watercolors and drawings by Ruskin, of whom I’m a big fan. No “major” works, though. The show was called “PreRpahealites and Italy,” when none of them ever went to Italy so far as I know!
By the way, Jen corrected me on the model for _The Annunciation_. It’s Gabriel’s sister Christina (the poet who wrote Goblin Market), and she **didn’t** have red hair. I know that traditionally redheads were viewed with mistrust, as if the devil had something to do with them. Mary Magdalen was commonly depicted as a redhead. So when Gabriel paints a redheaded Mary, and Millais around the same time paints a redheaded Christ (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/millais-christ-in-the-house-of-his-parents-the-carpenters-shop-n03584), they’re young Turks being provocative. A lot of people were incensed by the fact that Millais clearly modeled Joseph after a real life workman, farmer’s tan and all. I guess it worked if they still get a rise out of us today.
Okay, so like, you actually *know* something….I was just improvising
Sorry about that; my wife is literally a world-class scholar on these folks, and I can’t resist the chance to talk about them.
Please feel free to drop some knowledge should I ever opine on law or sprinkle my writing with occasional Latin phrases. 😉
Nam bona addiscere cognitionemque.
Yes, it is.
The category of “Christians” who believe there is a War on Christmas are not generally in the group that observes Advent. They do the Hanging of the Greens and other recent “traditions” (Drive-thru nativity scene?)…. Those who do not have traditions will be forced to invent them.
Any objection to me opening up a second front in the War on Christmas against people who put up Christmas decorations shortly after Halloween?
If it weren’t for the rain, I would have been hanging lights this past weekend. As it stands, I’ll be busy every weekend from now til Thanksgiving.
Keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.
Good for you, Norm, although I am of the put-up-the-tree-at-the-last-minute camp. And I’m not really one for outdoor displays.
My Dad says that when he was a kid, there was no tree when he and his brother and sisters went to bed on Christmas Eve, and they woke up to a fully decorated tree in the morning.
I kind of like that idea, although we’ve never gone quite that far at our house…
Started hanging a few strands yesterday and found myself swatting mosquitoes. I didn’t feel very festive.
That was the German tradition. I was told when possible, the parents would close off a room during Advent and not heat it, fill it with all those German cookies that need time to age to be edible like Spingerle, and put the tree and presents in there. Then either after Midnight Mass or first thing waking up Christmas morning, the room would be opened. I imagine that made quite an impression on kids, and kept Advent real.
Nowadays, Christmas is pretty much over before it technically starts.
#WaronAdvent
In my childhood home, the tree went up the weekend before Christmas Day. Everybody in the family helped decorate the tree and whatever other decorations we might have or make. My folks always said they couldn’t put it up earlier because we’d make them crazy beforehand.
In my children’s childhood home, the tree goes up the day after Thanksgiving, even now that they have moved out. I festoon the outside with animated lights, and the inside looks a bit like a department store with a Dept. 56 village, vintage Santas, an entire shelf of Nativities, a 12-foot tree and a mantle with about 60 of those old ceramic choir boys and girls. We rearrange the living room furniture and move several things into the garage to make room for it all. We embrace the season in all of its tacky wonderfulness.
Whatever works.
We may put up a tree this year, after not doing so for at least the past ten. Don’t know why.
I’ll celebrate Christmas during Christmas. Right now I’m looking forward to Advent with its preparation and quiet waiting.
Christ Child and Madonna-Salvadore Dali
http://33.media.tumblr.com/3db45654829f2d036e1505b55f1d04a0/tumblr_inline_myds2zs4cd1qkqzlv.jpg
No serious Christian cares what Starbucks has done with their cups.
As one of my church friends wrote yesterday on his facebook page- this is a media creation to generate clicks on stories – and he’s correct.
There’s no evidence that it is a media creation as anyone would reasonably consider it to mean –it started with a blogger. It went viral, then a backlash. Now Donald Trump has jumped in.
What really floors me is that these people are objecting to the lack of images of evergreens or snowflakes — things that have nothing to do with Jesus. Such symbols are equally or more fitting when celebrating the Winter solstice…
Not being a drinker of coffee, I didn’t realize that previous years’ cups were secular in design.
The controversy is more ridiculous than it seemed at first.
It gets weirder. I just got this email release:
I wonder — how would bradwarthen.com rate on the Index?
Do you purvey coffee now? It would be a great tie-in…since Starbucks snubbed you.
Hey, I’m still working on Starbucks. Hence the painfully obvious product placements in recent candidate interview posts…
Dude, they’re just not that into you.
What is a good name for your coffee brand?
How about “30”? As in, the traditional ending of news stories. As in, the median age of people who spend a lot of time in coffee shops…
Back when I was in my late 20s, and thinking about getting out of the newspaper game, I had in my head a VERY rough idea for a play about a newspaperman who was about to turn 30 and thinking about quitting the business. OK, maybe it doesn’t even qualify as a rough idea — all I really had was the title: “30.” Double entendre, you see.
Speaking of which, how about that REALLY awkward moment when Bush started to explain a play on words he had made? I forget what it was; I just remember him starting to explain it and then stopping himself…
Awfully obscure….
But you could have a beer
called Brad’s Grog
What a dumb time to be alive.
“May you live in interesting times” is supposed to be a curse. But it sounds preferable to unrelenting stupidity…
The problem with the FDC approach is that a low scoring brand might actually have a better product. What if Starbucks coffee is significantly better than Duncan Donuts? What if it is more convenient or less expensive? What if all your friends want to go to Starbucks instead of DD? Do you just skip coffee? Do you get new friends? I have a number of places that I don’t patronize partly because of politics. But honestly those places aren’t particularly good to start with. I also eat at certain restaurants that are politically marginal but otherwise have pretty good food and service. It’s not so easy to live your life based on political considerations.
I cannot imagine how crushingly joyless it must be to live a life where every choice is a political statement.
Well, in fact, an awful lot of choices *are* political statements, intended or otherwise…
Not for me.
When you spend money in one way instead of another, it ultimately has political repercussions. When you have children or not, when one spouse stays at home of cuts back on work hours, etc….
You’re talking about effects of choices. I’m talking about motivation for them.
I am deeply and profoundly ideologically opposed to restaurants with bad food and service, and I refuse to give them my business.
Don’t try to talk me out of it; I’m immovable.
This may be the basis of a movement…
What about good food but bad service? 🙂
Well, for one thing, most business owners are pretty conservative, so….
Look, if you must wear your faith on your coffee cup:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/252333506/cross-coffee-cozy-christian-cozy?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=christian%20coffee%20sleeve&ref=sr_gallery_4
Talk about trivializing one’s faith! Not to mention tacky.
You can also get knit/crocheted ones with a fish “embroidered” on with a loose running stitch.
Jesus wept.
But you know, they might help keep your coffee warm…
and your hands unburnt
The assault on Christmas that concerns me occurred long ago when it was determined to be commercially viable. Lack of snowflakes on an overpriced cup of coffee doesn’t diminish the religiosity of an already secular holiday. Why should Christians be concerned about a lack of promotion by government, commerce, or any other entity outside the faith? Maybe losing hold of favored status has some adherents feeling persecuted, but that’s pretty much the earthly reward promised several places in the gospels and a few other canonical books. Paul spoke of rejoicing in (because) of his sufferings, but I don’t think that’s what’s at play here. More of a “waaah, poor us!”
I believe a bunch of religious demagogues, who may be sincere for all I know, have found that creating a sense of outraged persecution solidifies and energizes their “flock.” Fighting one’s perceived persecution sells a lot better than following a path of humility and generosity….
I am a Christian and I like coffee, and I don’t care at all what color the cups are or what’s on them. I will still buy the coffee. OK, if they put satanic mean messages on their cups, I would probably care. But mostly, it’s their right to be as secular or non religious as they want, and I can respect that and still buy the coffee. Another thing that I think is stupid about this is that the Starbucks Christmas cups have mostly had secular symbols of the season on them anyway. I would argue that the red/green color scheme is just as much of a secular symbol as the other things, so I don’t see much of a change. They are still selling a “Christmas” blend coffee, so they don’t seem to be trying to avoid using the term there. I think the whole thing is silly. Maybe the line will be shorter. Yay!