See a woman standing on a sack of coffee beans, warming her hands on a Red and Green Starbucks coffee mug? It’s me. Put your picket signs down and listen. This won’t take long.
The Devil Made Her Do It
I feel your pain. After all, Red is the color of the apple that caused all the trouble in Eden. It is also the color that burns from the fields of poinsettias gracing supermarket entrances from Veteran’s Day until the New Year.
Note to Donald Trump: Go ahead. Build your barrio barrier. These plants will creep up your wall from their native land. Yes. Mexico. Brought here legitimately two centuries ago by Joel Roberts Poinsettia, the first United States Minister to Mexico.
Hello! Spilled blood is red. And who spilled His blood so that you could be free of sin? The original kind, emanating from the earth’s first bikini-clad refugees, just because Eve suggested, “Here, Adam, bite this.” Would you be making a stink if the Arbor of Knowledge were a prune tree? And Starbuck’s cups the color of a petrified scarab beetle and the human race gassier than the Alberta Tar Sands?
So. Every time I order a Grande Americano, in the crimson Starbuck’s receptacle that causes your halo to get stuck in the barn doorway, I am doubling down on my patriotism.
It would be better if you declared war on an underwater Martian blitzkrieg than gird yourself for the annual imaginary Christmas war you play in your head. Doesn’t it give you a hangover?
You Don’t Own Green
Western and northern Europeans festooned everything they could reach with mistletoe, Holly and Ivy during the dark winter months. Red berries reminded those suffering from Seasonal Affected Disorder that spring would arrive. Eventually.
“Seasonal Affect Disorder? S.A.D.? It’s depression. It’s winter. Let’s call it what it is. I digress.
Protest all you want about capitalism commandeering Christmas colors. Starbucks owns PMS 3452 C. Granted, the hunting green figure is a modest version of the original mermaid whose unfettered breasts caused more than one Victoria’s Secret model to reconsider implants. The company’s logo was generated thousands of years after three of the five Wise Guys arrived at the manger.
[During the trek, the dude with the chocolate, melted. The chap with the 14-carat diamond was last seen urging his camel toward Madagascar. This left Gold, Frank and Myrrh, which is great for wrinkles.]
Stop it. Has caffeine’s nod to the season of Jesus caused you to turn your plowshares into swords and abandon his tongue-in-cheek advice to ’turn the other cheek’?
Or, should we be worried you are creating a diversion? We the people are warming our hands on our red Starbucks cups while you shiver in church basement craft bazaars, surrounded by fields of potholders, crocheted Christmas tree skirts [can’t have too much trunk showing] and enough fruit cakes to sink the state of Texas?
By the way, stay away from the Pumpkin Lattes of Thanksgiving. Their older siblings were glowing Jack-o-Lanterns, lighting the night for devilish deeds, just a few weeks ago.
I am almost finished. Starbucks is not waging a war on Christmas. Its baristas are too busy serving cups of kindness-on-steroids to lines of faithful followers.
Excuse me. My Americano is ready.