Getting into the spirit

So it's Black Friday, wherein we Americans follow up a day set aside to give thanks for everything we have with a day set aside to trample each other to death trying to save money on overhyped garbage we really don't need.

Me, I stay right the hell away from stores on Black Friday.  I hate shopping in any case, and the rabid crowds only make it worse.  Plus, today marks the first day of the Little Drummer Boy Challenge, a yearly contest in which participants see how long they can make it into the Christmas season without hearing "The Little Drummer Boy," which ranks right up there with "Frosty the Snowman" and "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town" as the most annoying Christmas carol ever written.  This song not only is irritating as hell, it also has what must be the most ridiculous plot line ever dreamed up, involving a kid who comes up to a pair of new parents with a peacefully sleeping newborn baby, and the kid thinks, "You know what these people need?  A drum solo."

Frankly, I'm surprised Joseph didn't smack him.  Pah-rum-puh-pum-POW, you odious little twerp.

I've participated in this contest for nine years, and haven't made it to Christmas Day undefeated yet.  My most ignominious loss occurred a few years ago, when I was taken out of the competition by a clerk in a hardware store who didn't even know all of the freakin' words, and kept having to la-la bits of it:

Come they LA LA pah-rum-puh-pum-pum
A newborn LA LA LA pah-rum-puh-pum-pum
Our LA LA gifts we bring pah-rum-puh-pum-pum
LA LA before the king pah-rum-puh-pum-pum, rum-puh-pum-pum, rum-puh-pum-pum

And so on and so forth.  He was singing it with hearty good cheer, so I felt kind of guilty when I realized that he'd knocked me out of the game and blurted out, "Are you fucking kidding me?" a little louder than I intended, eliciting a shocked look from the clerk and a significant diminishment in the general Christmas spirit amongst those around me.

Thomas Couture, The Drummer Boy (1857) [Image is in the Public Domain]

And of course, the Christmas season wouldn't be complete without the Fox News types ramping up the whole imaginary War on Christmas thing.  We atheists have allegedly been waging this war for what, now... twenty years?  Twenty-five?  And yet if you'll look around you, just like the Grinch's attempt at banishing Christmas from Whoville, the holiday season still goes right on, pretty much exactly as it did before.

Oops!  Shouldn't say "holiday," because that's part of the War on Christmas, too, even though the word "holiday" comes from "holy day" and therefore is also religious.  This is a point that seems to escape a lot of the Fox News and Newsmax commentators and their ilk, but to be fair, "grip on reality" has never been their forte anyhow.  This year, for example, the rage-of-the-season has been triggered by we Godless Liberal Democratic Unpatriotic Snowflakes somehow inducing Starbucks to put out holiday cups that have designs of hearts and stars instead of having Christmas trees or presents or whatnot, a decision which apparently is Very Naughty In God's Sight.  One furious ex-customer shrieked, "Starbucks REMOVED CHRISTMAS from their cups because they hate Jesus!!!", because apparently all it takes to defeat their all-powerful and omnipotent God is to change the design on some disposable paper cups.

What is wryly amusing about all of this is that I'm one of the aforementioned liberal atheists, and I love the holidays.  We had a nice turkey-and-stuffing dinner yesterday with my brother-in-law and his family for Thanksgiving, and I'm already putting together some gifts for friends and family for Christmas and looking forward to putting up a tree.  So it might come as a surprise to Fox News et al. that in December I tell people "Merry Christmas" at least as often as I say "Happy Holidays." Basically, if someone says "Merry Christmas" to me, I say it back to them; if they say, "Happy Holidays," I say that.  Likewise "Happy Hanukkah," "Happy Kwanzaa," "Blessed Solstice," "Merry Festivus," or "Have A Nice Day."

You know why?  If people speak kindly to me, I reciprocate, because I may be a liberal and an atheist, but I am not an asshole.  So I guess that's three ways in which I differ from the commentators over at Fox News.

Basically, be nice to me, I'll be nice to you.  Unless you're singing "The Little Drummer Boy."  I'm sorry, but my tolerance does have its limits.

In any case, mostly what I plan to do today is to sit around recovering from the food-and-wine-induced coma in which I spent most of yesterday evening.  So however you choose to observe the day and the season, I hope you enjoy it, whether you get into the spirit of it or pretty much ignore the whole thing.

Pah-rum-puh-pum-pum.

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Cup of woe

Those of you who are, like me, of the atheist persuasion will no doubt be thrilled to hear that we are already ramping up the War on Christmas.

Hey, if the stores can start putting up Christmas decorations before Halloween, in the interest of fairness it should be okay for us godless heathens to start our diabolical machinations at around the same time, right?

So it's time for us to reveal our strategy for 2016.  Ready?

This year we are going to destroy Christmas and crush the hopes and dreams of little Christian children everywhere by: getting Starbucks to change the color of their coffee cups.

Mwa ha ha ha etc.  *rubs hands together maniacally*

Okay, so I admit that we atheists had nothing to do with the fact that Starbucks changed their coffee cup design.  In fact the first one, which was red, honestly had nothing to do with Baby Jesus, either.  It was just red, as are many things in life, including stop signs and the sweatshirt I'm currently wearing.  The Starbucks marketing arm decided that it was time for a change, and hired artist Shogo Ota to draw a very cool design -- a hundred faces drawn using a single pen stroke.  Ota's design, said a spokesperson for Starbucks, "represents the connections we have as a community. It's meant to be a symbol of unity, and to encourage us to be good to each other."

Which elicited an "oh, hell no" from the evangelical Christians.  Apparently to them Christianity, and Christmas in particular, has nothing to do with unity and being good to each other.  Here is just a small sampling of the outraged responses Starbucks got upon revealing the new design:

• Screw you.  My coffee should NOT (and does NOT) come with political brainwashing.  I dropped Starbucks like a hot rock.
• Frankly, the only thing that can redeem them from this whitewashing of Christmas is to print Bible verses on their cups next year.
• All Republicans boycott Starbucks.
• The giant coffee chain is calling this year’s monstrosity the “unity” cup...  Hmm, what else is unified…. ISIS!!?!  The unified caliphate of the Islamic State!
• Starbucks gets rid of Christmas colour, replaces with Islamic colour, all in the name of "unity."  Get used to this.

Yes!  Islamic green!  Same as those goddamn trees you see everywhere!  And grass!  Even the plant kingdom is trying to brainwash you to accept Shari'a law!  Buy a house plant, and the next thing you know you'll be standing on the street corner shouting "Allahu akbar" and taking pot shots at passersby!

I mean, for fuck's sake.

What strikes me about this tempest in a coffee cup is that these are, by and large, the same people who scream bloody murder about "political correctness" whenever someone objects to derogatory language being directed toward minorities, and yet they consider a change in a coffee cup design to be the moral equivalent of carpet-bombing Whoville.  So I guess their blathering about political correctness translates to "you can't take offense to anything I say, but I'm still entitled to get my panties in a twist over absolutely nothing."

So anyhow.  My feeling is that if we non-believers are going to get accused of waging a War on Christmas, we oughta at least live up to our reputations, and that as a first salvo, changing coffee cup colors kind of sucks.  Time to ramp things up.  I'm thinking of doing my part by carrying around a boombox, and every time I hear sappy Christmas music, revving up some Nirvana or Nine Inch Nails or Linkin Park.  So goodbye, "Little Drummer Boy," "Frosty the Snowman," "Sleigh Bells," and "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer."  Hello "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "Closer," and "Waiting for the End to Come."

Which would be a distinct improvement, especially as regards to "Little Drummer Boy."  I freakin' hate that song.

Cup of woe

So it's a bright time in the calendar year here in the United States, despite the shortening of days and cooling of the weather.  Thanksgiving approaches, with its promise of good meals and family together-time.  And after that, of course, we have the Christmas season, a time of gift-giving, religious observance, and atheists declaring war on happiness, tradition, and little children's hopes and dreams.

At least that's the contention of a certain cadre of über-Christians, who every year trot out the whole tired "War on Christmas" trope.  Can we just get one thing out of the way, right from the beginning?

I am an outspoken atheist blogger, and I put up a Christmas tree every year.  I think they're beautiful. I love getting gifts for my family and friends, even though my gift-wrapping abilities are such that the presents I give usually look like they were wrapped either by a four-year-old or an unusually artistic gorilla.  I like a lot of Christmas music -- "O Holy Night" and "What Child is This?" are two particular favorites.  (I do have to admit, though, that I find "Frosty the Snowman" and "The Little Drummer Boy" so annoying that I nearly break my index finger turning the car radio off when they start playing.)

And most of my atheist friends are the same way.  We have no problem with anyone celebrating Christmas, or not, as they see fit -- as long as (1) it's not forced on anyone, and (2) Christmas displays aren't paid for at public expense.  If you follow those two rules, you can have a Christmas scene out on your lawn with lights so bright that it disrupts flyover jet traffic, as far as I'm concerned.

But that hasn't stopped the idiotic rhetoric from starting.  And this year, it's directed at none other than Starbucks, because they changed their holiday cup design from having reindeer and snowflakes to a simple red-and-green.

Well.  You'd think they were proposing terrorist attacks on Whoville, from the reaction that got.  Here's a smattering of responses:

From conservative British MP David Burrowes: "The Starbucks coffee cup change smells more of political correctness than a consumer-led change." 

From Christian Institute's spokesperson Simon Calvert: "What is it about Christmas that Starbucks are [sic] afraid of celebrating?  Haven’t they heard it’s the most wonderful time of the year, and the season of good will to ALL men?" 

From social media commentator Chuck Nellis: "My Christmas mentality: if a store won't promote Christmas re Starbucks, I'm not spending my hard-earned money there." 

From a poster on Twitter, in response to the story about the change on Breitbart News: "Since you're running away from Christianity, I'm running away from you.  Just exercising my financial choice." 

From Christian radio personality Joshua Feuerstein: "Starbucks has removed Christmas from their cups because they hate Jesus...  The Christian majority in this country has awakened and are demanding that our voice be heard."

Trust me, Joshua, we never have problems hearing the Christians of your stripe. given that they always seem to be screaming with outrage over something even though they are, as you point out, still the majority in this country and in control of damn near everything.

It seems like people of this mindset would not be content until every business, everywhere, plasters their walls with "Merry Christmas" and "Jesus Is The Reason For The Season," and blares Christmas carols from their speakers 24/7.  Anything less is a deliberate and personal attack against everything holy.

What makes this wryly funny is that one of Starbucks' most popular seasonal coffees is called "Christmas Blend."  ("Just right for the season," the description says.)

I wonder if the people who are screeching about this realize how rapidly this sort of behavior makes you lose your credibility.  Take for example Colorado pastor Kevin Swanson, who at the National Religious Liberties Conference last week had a complete meltdown in public and said that god was going to wreak destruction on the United States because of Harry Potter, despite the fact that the books were written by a British author, are set in Britain, and generated a movie series wherein the parts were played by British actors.

God, evidently, is not known for his accurate aim while exercising his "smite" option.

So anyway.  It's doubtful that Starbucks is anti-Christmas, given that the cups are still red and green, and a business deliberately cutting itself out of sales during the Christmas season would be kind of stupid financially.  Baby Jesus is unlikely to be upset if his image isn't broadcast everywhere; we all know that Christmas is coming, okay?

Let me end with an admonition from the War-on-Christmas cadre's favorite book, specifically Matthew 6:6: "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly."

Taking a shot at Starbucks

At what point does the leader of a group say something that is so far out on the streets of CrazyTown that his/her followers say, "I'm sorry, but you're a loon," and abandon ship?

The answer is, "apparently, it doesn't happen," given that Reverend James David Manning of the Atlah World Missionary Church of Harlem, New York still has a congregation.

Manning, you may remember, is the raving wingnut whose demand that homosexuals be stoned to death, as per biblical law, caused one brave lesbian to show up at his doorstep saying that she was there for the sentence to be carried out.  Once the guy who answered the door (who was, by the way, not Manning himself) said that he "didn't have any stones," the woman, one Jennifer Louise Lopez, thanked him for not killing her and left.

But the video of this epic bluff-calling rightly went viral.  And you'd think that'd have been the end of Reverend Manning and his hate-based church.

You'd be wrong.

It was only a matter of time before Reverend Manning topped his own previous attempts at setting a world's record for Bizarre Quasi-Religious Statements.  And last week he did it, by claiming that Starbucks is flavoring its lattés with...

"... the semen of sodomites."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

I'd like to say I'm making this up, but here's the direct quote.

My suspicion is they’re getting their semen from sodomites. The semen flavors up the latté and makes you think you are having a good time drinking it...  There will not be a public sodomite in Harlem in not too many days.  Starbucks will be found to be perverting its customers and perverting human sexuality, as if drinking Starbucks is some sort of a sacrificial ritual bath where they kill the innocent babies and drink their blood.  And Starbucks will close.

I can't think of much of a response to this other than, "What the actual fuck?"

I mean, consider this from a purely practical standpoint.  Think of the number of lattés sold daily by Starbucks.  Assuming that each one has the ejaculate from one (1) sodomite in it, Starbucks would have to employ tens of thousands of guys, pretty much jacking off round the clock, to keep up with the demand.  And given the way the male reproductive equipment works, it's not like the same guy could keep, um, producing, over and over and over.  It's kind of a direct application of the Law of Diminishing Returns, you know?

So mass-producing wankuccinos turns out not to be that easy to do.  Not that anything like pragmatic logic is driving Reverend Manning, of course.  The man is so clearly batshit insane that it's a wonder he doesn't get sedated with horse tranquilizers by his friends and relatives.

What's even more of a mystery, though, is that he still has a congregation.  Which, apparently, he does.  It's possible that they show up on Sunday mornings just to see what bizarre thing he's going to say next; sort of a once-a-week version of street theater.  But you know, I have the feeling that it isn't that.  I'd be willing to bet, if I were willing to go to one of his services (which I'm not), that people would be sitting there and nodding and saying "Amen" at appropriate times.

Which brings me back to my original question.  Okay, we can make a guess that Reverend Manning himself simply has a screw loose, but why don't his followers see this?  Are they so sunk in the whole be-respectful-to-authority thing that they're unwilling to stand up, laugh directly in his face, and walk out?

Or do they actually believe what he's saying?

If it's the latter, I don't want to know, because it amounts to the hypothesis that insanity is contagious, and that's just terrifying.  And yet another reason to give a wide berth to the Atlah World Missionary Church.