Is the Rage Over Red Cups Real?

  

I've watched in fascination as the Starbucks Red Cups Controversy has unfolded. By now you've probably heard the story, some Christians were upset when Starbucks unveiled this year's holiday cup: a plain red ombre cup with no decorations. Despite the fact that the cup is red and green (from the Starbucks logo) which almost everyone knows is distinctively Christmas-y, the new cup was considered an assault on Christmas, therefore we should be offended because... Jesus. Right. Then we had a lot of people respond pointing out how ridiculous it is to get upset over a paper cup, how there are actually real problems in the world, and how Starbucks usually doesn't feature anything distinctively Christmas on their holiday cups anyway. And finally, the latest development in this saga is that some are now questioning whether there ever really were people legitimately upset over the cups in the first place, or is this a marketing ploy by Starbucks or a conspiracy from the media to make Christians look like idiots?

Here's what I think. First, the beauty of social media is that we can go back to when this controversy started and see that there really were people upset over the cups who most likely are not shills of Starbucks (unless you think Glenn Beck is secretly employed by Starbucks, in which case you definitely are a die-hard conspiracy theorist). Second, is the media milking this? Maybe, but only to the degree that the media milks everything because of course the media loves a good story. The more attention a story gets, the more page views, the more advertising revenue. But no, I don't believe this is a conspiracy against Christians (more on that below) or a conspiracy to help give Starbucks free advertising. The real reason why this story has gone so viral is because it's such an obvious target. It's so easy to make funny memes attacking the stupidity of complaining about a cup or serious memes pointing out the very real problems in our world today that dwarf the pettiness of whining over not having a Baby Jesus snowman on your coffee cup. I have seen a lot of great responses, all from everyday people like you and me, just average citizen sharing their thoughts. This story has gone viral largely because we the people have responded in a viral way. And that's a good thing! It's great that the voices of reasons are banding together to shout down the insanity of those complaining about a paper cup.

But Bristol Palin claims that media coverage has hyped the Starbucks story and "is just another attempt by the LEFT to make Christians look stupid." She also claims that those who are upset with Starbucks are "one small group." Based on these statements, I'm guessing that Palin did not do any research on the origins and evolution of this Starbucks frenzy. Let's look at some numbers. Bristol Palin is a public figure who had her own reality television show on Lifetime and appeared on Dancing with the Stars (making it to the finals and taking third place). Her Facebook page has almost 458,000 fans. The man who started this Starbucks-hates-Christmas cup circus is Joshua Feuerstein, a former pastor who has become a social media celebrity due to his inflammatory far right wing posts and video rants. He has nearly 1.88 MILLION Facebook fans. Do the math. That's almost quadruple the number of Facebook fans that Palin has. It is Feuerstein's Facebook page that Palin refers to as "one small group." But somehow this man posts an anti-Starbucks video to his "small group" of fans, who then repost it over half a million times, resulting it in being viewed over 15 MILLION times in just six days. Then he claims that as a result of his initial video/post, "tens of thousands Christians invaded Starbucks" to express their displeasure with the alleged removal of Christmas from Starbucks stores:

Glenn Beck - who in case you're wondering, has almost 3.25 million Facebook fans - has also posted against Starbucks using the hashtags ‪#‎stopthepcmaddness‬ ‪#‎standforCHRIST‬ ‪#‎merryCHRISTmasstarbucks‬. In his post, he linked to an article praising Feuerstein for his plot to get baristas to write Merry Christmas on cups but pointed out, "While this is cute to do this, don't forget he just gave them his money to write on the cup. Who wins?!" Feuerstein playfully commented that Beck was slamming him, to which Beck responded that he was not and he thinks Feuerstein is "clever":

So, we have an internet figure with a fairly large following and a very well-known, mainstream conservative figure both posting against Starbucks. Collectively, they could have over 5 million Facebook followers (though there's no way of knowing how many of their fans overlap). There is also the conservative news site Chicks on the Right which has posted against Starbucks twice since the controversy started (here and here) as well as Right Wing News which posted an article titled Christians Livid After Starbucks Releases Unusual Holiday Cups, on November 5, the day the story first broke and before it was a trending story on social media. Yesterday, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump chimed in to suggest that maybe we boycott Starbucks and actor Rob Lowe tweeted this:

Between their program to have baristas lecture me about race and now their removal of "Merry Christmas" I'm officially over @Starbucks #done

— Rob Lowe (@RobLowe) November 10, 2015

Yet, Palin wants to blame the LEFT media for hyping anti-Starbucks outrage?! That's called deflection. Here's a novel thought: why don't we blame the people who are actually voicing outrage against Starbucks? And instead of blaming the media for reporting on the negative behavior of these individuals, we could blame the religious people for actually engaging in this negative behavior. We could blame Feuerstein and Beck for using their substantial platforms to complain about an issue that makes Christians look stupid. We could even take it a step further and blame the people who give Feuerstein a platform (by the way, the left wing media didn't make almost 2 million people like this dude's page). Some of these individuals who "like" him are my own Facebook friends (ah yes there is no privacy with Facebook). So for all of you who "like" Mr. Feuerstein... congratulations, you have helped make a lunatic a mouthpiece for Christianity.

So is the rage over red cups real? Yes, it is real. I doubt Joshua Feuerstein's claim is true that "tens of thousands" are invading Starbucks to demand that the baristas write "Merry Christmas" on their cups, but we can thank him, not the liberal media, for posting that lie.  Regardless of the exact numbers, we know that it is true that there are enough high-profile conservatives who are complaining about this to warrant the excellent response we've seen over the last few days.

Source: Facebook

Using Turkey Leftovers

For Christmas this year, we hosted dinner - it was our first experience cooking a holiday dinner as well as our first experience cooking a turkey. I like cooking to be somewhat challenging, so I wasn't content with just any old turkey (plus I don't really like turkey). It had to be an exceptional turkey! So, we made a Tyler Florence recipe... fresh sage and butter rubbed under the skin of a maple-roasted turkey shingled with smoked bacon on top and homemade sage cornbread stuffing inside. We totally misjudged the time and dinner ended up being later than planned but it turned out great. It was super moist, just the way I like it! But it was a 13.5 pound turkey served to just four adults and one toddler, so there was plenty of turkey left. After two days of leftovers, we had eaten all of the side dishes but still had quite a bit of turkey. So I decided to adapt a chicken salad recipe and make turkey salad for dinner last night. The cold, creamy salad made a nice change from eating hot turkey. (And I still had turkey left after making this, so the remaining turkey went into the freezer and I expect we'll do something like turkey club sandwiches with sometime, whenever we recover from turkey burn-out.)


Turkey Salad with Walnuts and Grapes

1/2 c. Miracle Whip
2 Tbsp. sour cream
1 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 tsp. honey
2 c. turkey, broken or shredded into bite-sized pieces
1 c. seedless green grapes, quartered or sliced
3 green onions, thinly sliced
1 rib celery, thinly sliced
1/2 c. walnut pieces

Combine the Miracle Whip, sour cream, lemon juice, and honey in a medium mixing bowl. Add turkey, grapes, onions, celery, and walnut pieces and stir gently until mixed in. Add more Miracle Whip if needed.

Note: I used a mix of dark and light meat, but it could be made any way you prefer.

Find this recipe and more over at my new blog, Cucina di Christina!

Holiday Baking

One of my favorite parts of the Christmas season is the holiday baking! Growing up, we had some great recipes that became traditions that were made every year for as long as I can remember such as Sugar Cookies, Poppyseed Bread, and White Chocolate Dipped Pretzels. New traditions later would come along like English Toffee or Spiced Pecans. Now that I have my own family, I am enjoying sharing some of these same traditions with Peter and this year we will be making a few recipes from my own childhood as well as a few new ones. (It is my goal to share all of these recipes on the blog at some point this month, but we'll see if that actually happens or not!)

My baking list:
Sugar Cookies
Poppy Seed Bread
Orange Juice Balls
Oreo Truffles
Buck Eyes

Technically, some of these items probably don't count as "baking" since they aren't baked, but who cares. So far I've got the first three recipes made and will hopefully complete the last two this week. The Buck Eyes are for a cookie exchange that I'm attending next Tuesday morning so that definitely needs to be completed soon!

What are some of your favorite holiday food traditions? Please feel free to include entire recipes in your comments. I love finding new recipes!

Find these recipes and more over at my new blog, Cucina di Christina!

The Santa Myth

As Christmas approaches this year, we are faced for the first time with the decision of how we will handle what I like to call "The Santa Myth" with our son, Peter. This is his third Christmas, but his first year with a significant comprehension level so it hasn't been much of an issue previously.

Growing up, my brothers and I never "did" Santa but my parents weren't militant about it either; we didn't ignore Santa's mythical existence, we simply knew the truth that he wasn't real. While some of the more radical people we knew shunned such things, we still watched Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and even had some Santa ornaments hanging on the tree. My parents preferred to tell us about the real St. Nicholas, the person who the Santa Claus myth developed from, and we even had a nifty picture storybook about him. So since Santa was never a part of my childhood, I have difficulty relating to the notion that it's somehow mean to "deprive" a child of this experience. And the suggestion that it is deprivation raises the question that if Santa is so important to the holiday, then perhaps our entire focus is wrong. In fact, two years ago I responded to someone on a message board when they stated that "Christmas was less satisfying with Santa out of the equation":

"I want my kids to focus on the real meaning of Christmas, that God loved them enough to send His Son under the most humble of circumstances so that they could be redeemed. That has nothing to do with Santa and if they can't cherish Christmas without Santa, then they would be totally missing the point."

So here are my top reasons for questioning Santa Claus, none of which involve wacko conspiracy theories like how the letters of Santa can be rearranged to spell Satan or anything like that. *grin*

1. This may seem pretty basic, but in case it's not: it's a lie. It may seem like a harmless lie, but that doesn't make it any less false. And it's not that it's just one lie - pretending that Santa exists when he does not - but often an entire package of them. Because once you start down that road, then you have to buy presents that are "from" Santa, then eat the cookies and pretend that it was Santa who ate them, etc. When I was 4 years old, I asked my mom why we gave toys to "Toys for Tots" if Santa brought toys to everyone. Instead of trying to spin it, my mom told me the truth (and apparently, I had already been told that Santa wasn't real the year before, but had forgotten).

2. Believing in Santa can take the focus of the Christmas season off of Jesus, and on to the more materialistic aspects of the holiday. Sure, presents are a fun part of the holiday, but should not take center focus. Santa tends to emphasize the "me, me, me" aspect because it's all about what he is going to bring you. This also detracts from the concept that gifts are about giving, not receiving.

This doesn't mean pretending about something is always bad. When I was little, we didn't believe that the Tooth Fairy was real but we still had fun with the idea. We'd put our tooth under the pillow and get money, which we knew had been left by our parents but we still would tell people, "Yeah, the Tooth Fairy left me a dollar!" But the difference with that was there's nothing inherently spiritual about the tooth-loss process and our fun make-believe involving a tooth-stealing fairy wasn't distracting us from something more important.

3. Mixing truth with myth can cause confusion in the mind of a young child. We live in a country where Christianity is continually questioned. Then we have Christmas, which is supposed to be about Jesus' birth, but instead is largely secularized. (Just watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and count how many religious references you see compared to secular.) To a child who had believed in Santa, learning that he is actually not real could cause confusion. That child might then wonder what other things about Christmas are not real, maybe the nativity story or even Jesus Himself. In a world where the real meaning of Christmas - the celebration of Jesus Christ's human incarnation to redeem sinners - is often ignored in the name of political correctness, why have another figure competing with Jesus?

Noel Piper in Treasuring God in Our Traditions observes "...celebrating Santa and manger will postone a child's clear understanding of what the real truth of God is. It's very difficult for a young child to pick through a marble cake of part truth and part imagination to find the crumbs of reality.... Santa is so much like what we're trying all year to teach our children about God."

She then goes on to list the similarities that Santa has:
"He's omniscient--he sees everything you do.
He rewards you if you're good.
He's omnipresent--at least he can be everywhere in one night.
He gives you good gifts.
He's the most famous 'old man in the sky' figure."

For my own children, my conclusion is that it is simply not worth it to perpetuate a myth that adds nothing to the real Reason we celebrate while having the potential to take much away. Instead, there are plenty of meaningful Christmas traditions such as Advent wreaths as well as harmlessly pointless ones (baking sugar cookies!) that will build lasting memories with our little ones.