The 2015 War on Christmas has begun

By KAREN PARKER | County Line Editor

‘Tis the season for the War on Christmas. It is becoming a tradition like Advent calendars and Black Friday. Most of us would think war and Christmas don’t belong in the same sentence, but then most of us just aren’t as sensitive to insults as we ought to be.

But leave it to Starbucks to bumble in on dangerous territory and produce a plain red cup for the holidays, touching off a firestorm of outrage. Cups in the past always sported a holiday look with reindeer, snowflakes and other symbols. Well, for heaven’s sake, everyone knows that nothing says “birth of Jesus” more than snowflakes and reindeer emblazoned on a cup that is used for 10 minutes and then pitched in the garbage.

What can you expect from a company that gives us the Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha at a whopping 520 calories, the equivalent of 3.7 cans of Coca-Cola?

Starbucks barely had time to squirt a glob of artery-blocking whipped cream on a latte when a self-proclaimed evangelist’s video decrying the company’s assault on Christmas drew 10 million hits on YouTube.

Joshua Feuerstein went to a local Starbucks, wearing his Jesus shirt and carrying a gun (because Starbucks hates the Second Amendment, he claimed). He told some unwitting barista that his name was “Merry Christmas” so that the Christian message was written on his cup, and then uploaded a video to Facebook, encouraging his followers to do the same at their local Starbucks.

“I think in the age of political correctness, we’ve become so open-minded our brains have literally fallen out of our head,” he said.

Then the master of insult, Donald Trump, leaped into the fray, suggesting the company ought to be boycotted. Furthermore, Trump noted that when he becomes president, everyone would say “merry Christmas.” Trump did not give any details on how this mandate will be enforced, but it’s possible the punishment will include being forced to help build the wall between the United States and Mexico.

Starbucks, quick to recognize a public relations disaster, said the move was an acknowledgement that its staff and customers came from various religious and cultural backgrounds and that a plain red cup offended no one. It was like a blank slate, they noted, allowing everyone to tell his or her own Christmas story.

Ah, yes, you have no idea how often I have sat around the Christmastree and suggested to my family that we go to Starbucks and tell our Christmas story over a steaming cup of Dark Mocha Frappuccino® Blended Beverage with a side order of double chocolate brownies.

We might even fold our hands, bow our heads and ask, “What would Jesus order?”

Never one to miss kicking a competitor when it’s down, Dunkin’ Donuts released a photo of its holiday cup complete with pine branches surrounding the word “Joy.”

That still was not enough to please Donald Trump, who told Fox News, “I think it would be nice if somebody put ‘Merry Christmas’ on something, you know, like the old days, right? But they don’t have ‘Merry Christmas,’ they have ‘Joy.’ But I think they shouldput ‘Merry Christmas’ on. Then I’ll start going there and buying coffee there even though I don’t drink coffee.”

Oddly enough, while the media has reveled in the battle, most conservative Christian organizations have pronounced it silly.

“We have a better story to tell than one of faux outrage,” Ed Stetzer wrote in an opinion piece last week for the Christianity Today website. “So let’s tell it. It’s not the job of your barista to share the Gospel.”

It may appear that Fox News generated the War on Christmas, but thiscountry has a rich tradition of battling over Christmas’s true meaning, dating back to the pilgrims. They banned celebrations in the belief that the holiday’s December timing had its roots in pagan worship and could not be verified in the Bible. They also objected to a long tradition of celebrating the holiday with drunkenness and debauchery. No holiday nog for those stuffed shirts, and no kissing under the mistletoe either.

When businesses began to tie increasing sales with holiday gift giving in the 1800s, newspapers railed against the commercialization of Christmas in editorials, some of which suggested any hint of the holiday should be banned from advertising.

Actually, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea.

You will notice that in light of the Paris disaster, the tempest in a coffee cup has faded from view.

Instead of worrying about how to return Santa’s sleigh to the side of a coffee cup, we are now busy proposing to railroad every Syrian refugee out of the country. Why, even our governor is on board with banning Syrian refugees from the state. Will there be checkpoints in La Crosse and Beloit? A wall around the state, such as the one he proposed for the U.S. /Canadian border?

I am not sure where our governor got this idea. As a good Christian, perhaps he read Galatians 3:28.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

Oh, yeah, except Syrians.

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