Starbucks: Cupfuls of controversy

In a hugely unscientific study, we’ve determined that folks around here care more about Christmas than they do about homosexuality.

Well, at least on Starbucks cups.

The Seattle-based latte monster has received some abuse for the design of this year’s holiday cup.

It carries a wild, modernistic look with the main Starbucks logo in the middle — but it also shows two generic hands that are interlocked.

There have been accusations that the hands represent an active promotion of gay lifestyles, even though neither of the hands can be identified as one gender or the other.

Starbucks, which has been criticized for its holiday cups in the past, says the design signifies togetherness.

It’s hard to blame the coffee giant for being defensive, following some serious blowback when it used plain red “minimalist” cups in 2015.

Some Christian groups called out Starbucks that year for avoiding the word “Christmas.”

IT SEEMED like an odd attack at the time, since Starbucks — like most large retailers — had no previous history of using religious symbols.

The Starbucks name itself comes from the book “Moby Dick,” and the familiar cup logo is actually “a 16th century Norse woodcut of a twin-tailed mermaid, or Siren,” according to the company.

Furthermore, Starbucks insists that it has routinely embraced the proper spirit on its cups, because it “has told a story of the holidays by featuring symbols of the season, from vintage ornaments and hand-drawn reindeer to modern vector-illustrated characters.”

It has not, however, put a nativity scene on its cups.

That long secular history made the 2015 opposition a bit strange, but it was loud.

Crusaders also claimed that Starbucks employees are not allowed to say “Merry Christmas.”

Employees insist that’s not true.

“There aren’t any restrictions,” said Ryan King, a shift supervisor at the busy Starbucks near the junction of Highway 41 and Interstate 90 in Post Falls. “We’re only told to greet customers pleasantly.”

KING SAID he hasn’t heard a single complaint about the “hand-holding” cup, and a couple of other Starbucks employees mentioned that they couldn’t notice anything offensive in the design.

“We haven’t had one person even mention it when I’ve been here,” King said.

Customers Makayla Magnuson and Rylie Garrett both said they didn’t understand criticism of the design — while two other coffee-sippers overheard the conversation and simply shook their heads.

“This is supposed to represent gay?” Magnuson said. “I don’t get that at all.”

Everyone, however, recalled the uproar of 2015.

“Oh, yeah,” King said. “That was the year of the red cup. There was an online thing, too, telling people to say their name was ‘Merry Christmas,’ so we’d say it when we called out their orders.

“We just went with it, because people are entitled to their own beliefs. But the odd thing is that we can say ‘Merry Christmas’ any time, without having it written on a coffee cup.

“That was a protest from some people who didn’t like the cup. But this thing about promoting gays? We can’t see it and so far, neither can our customers.”

So there you have it, our comprehensive study of local citizen attitudes toward the Starbucks mindset.

Surely they must be resting easier in Seattle.

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Steve Cameron is a columnist for The Press. Follow A Brand New Day at facebook.com/BrandNewDayCDAPress. Email: [email protected]