Let’s Wink to the War on Christmas

Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:35 pm

Thanksgiving wasn’t even over yet when Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald tweeted,

“Thanksgiving is mostly over. So I am officially launching the media war on Christmas. Let’s meet at George soros’s home to gather weaponry.”

I’m a Pagan and it was our holiday first, but alright, let’s play. After all, as the retail industry has proved, again and again, you can never start early enough. So Hooah!

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Starbucks is there already. They unveiled their new green holiday cup on November 1. Who can forget the red holiday cup controversy of 2015, the infamous “Satan Sippers”?

(This author has one in his collection. My local Starbucks told me the brouhaha had made them collector’s items. Gets yours early as a symbol of whatever, or just as a sign that you’re thirsty.)

According to Starbucks,

“The green cup and the design represent the connections Starbucks has as a community with its partners (employees) and customers. During a divisive time in our country, Starbucks wanted to create a symbol of unity as a reminder of our shared values, and the need to be good to each other,” said Howard Schultz, chairman and CEO.

Awe. Well, that’s just so hateful. What about baby Jesus?

CNN’s MoneyStream senior editor David Goldman winks at us with the answer:

Yes. Editors are paid to know these things.

Esquire’s Matt Miller humorously observes that,

“Confusingly enough, some seem to believe that the red (which did not represent Christmas last year), should be brought back to these green cups to make them more Christmas-y.”

Oh dear.

It’s a cup. You drink out of it. You don’t hang it from your tree unless you’re celebrating the birth of coffee. As Katherine Timpf of The National Review and Fox News put it in response to the fuss over the new green cup,

With all the green and red being flashed around this time of the year, the idea that because a cup is red or green somebody hates Jesus is as absurd as the idea that Donald Trump is an honest man.

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.