Title: Starbucks Is Criticized for Its Holiday Cups. Yes, Again. - The New York Times
Headings: Starbucks Is Criticized for Its Holiday Cups. Yes, Again.
Starbucks Is Criticized for Its Holiday Cups. Yes, Again.
A Gay Agenda?
The War on Christmas

Content: We intentionally designed the cup so our customers can interpret it in their own way, adding their own color and illustrations.” The War on Christmas
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The blank red canvas of the 2015 holiday cup. Credit...
Mark Lennihan/Associated Press
Controversy over the design of seasonal Starbucks cups is just one front in an annual culture war over the role of religion and liberalism in the five-week period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, a period that people inclined toward interfaith outreach might call “the holiday season.” Like many divisive cultural debates, arguments over the Christian bona fides of seasonal Starbucks cups appear to have intensified during the 2016 presidential campaign as political and social tensions heightened in many areas of American life. In 2015, Starbucks announced it would remove traditional holiday symbols, like reindeer and Christmas trees, from its holiday cups in favor of a more minimalist red design. In a statement released at the time, the company said it wanted to “create a culture of belonging, inclusion and diversity” and meant the cups as an invitation for “customers to tell their Christmas stories in their own way, with a red cup that mimics a blank canvas.” That decision was met with an angry online backlash from conservatives and others who saw it as an example of political correctness run amok. Joshua Feuerstein, a conservative Christian activist with a robust social media presence, urged a boycott in a Facebook video that has been viewed over 17 million times. One of the people who weighed in on the 2015 Starbucks controversy was then-presidential candidate Donald J. Trump, who frequently used his campaign speeches to complain about people and retailers who say “happy holidays” instead of “merry Christmas.” At a rally that November, he identified Starbucks as an offender and suggested the company was due for some backlash.