When my husband asked me yesterday if I heard about people being angry about Starbucks holiday cups, my first thought was that people were upset because it’s too soon to be doing Christmas stuff. No. The actual problem, according to one of those anti-whatever groups that like to get the rightwing so-called Christian base up in arms is that the plain red cups with a green Starbucks logo is taking the Christ out of Christmas: Christian evangelists claim Starbucks fanned ‘war on Christmas’ with minimalist holiday red coffee cups

Yep, the annual fake War on Christmas is underway!

I can totally see their point. I mean, past Starbucks holiday cups have featured such unmistakeable symbols of Christ as extremely abstract snowflakes, abstract peppermint candies, a winking snowman, a bobsledding dog, a squirrel begging for an acorn, and who can forget the jazzy Santa Claus? [/sarcasm]

The number of times that these folks have claimed that people are erasing Christ from Christmas by citing a derth of Santa Claus imagery just cracks me up every time. I wrote previously about how when I was a kid growing up in Southern Baptist churches Santa Claus was not considered a symbol of Christian Christmas at all. Oh, we weren’t forbidden from having Santas in our homes or visiting Santas in shopping malls or expecting presents from Santa. But it was very clearly part of the secular celebration, and not to be allowed in the church building itself. Specifically I wrote about the time that the Day Care associated with the church I attended as a teen-ager allowed the children to sing a song about Santa Claus as part of the annual Christmas event at the day care, and how a whole bunch of the church ladies were very upset about it: Up on the house top…

For some context, I should point out that most of the Baptist Churches I attended growing up (we moved around a lot because of my Dad’s job) also didn’t believe in having a manager scene inside the sanctuary of the church, unless it was an actual reenactment of the birth of Jesus being performed as part of the service. They might have a big light-up manger scene out on the lawn next to the church sign, but not inside the chruch, because that was iconography or idolatry!

Many of them only allowed a Christmas tree to be out in the social hall or the lobby, but not in the sanctuary because the tree was considered mostly a secular symbol, as well.

Anyway, it’s silly. And it’s so silly, that when my husband and I went shopping later in the day yesterday, I had to go to Starbucks for the express purpose of getting something in the red cup.