There are some Christians out there who really need to get a life!

There are a bunch of Christians out there who really have to get a life. They really have to get a life. As proof, I submit the “controversy” around the Christmas take-out coffee cups produced by Starbucks.

Unlike cups produced in previous years, this year’s model is plain red, and does not include some of the holiday-themed iconography that Starbucks has produced in the past. This absence has apparently offended one Joshua Feuerstein – a self-described American evangelist, Internet, and social media personality” – who is out there railing against “the age of political correctness.” Feuerstein has apparently produced a video that’s going around the Internet.

Geez, this guy needs to get a life. And everyone who follows him.

First of all, may I just point out the following:

• The entire month of December and much of November is already devoted to Christmas. You can’t escape it. The holiday songs. The holiday lights. The holiday displays. You just can’t escape it.
• Christ was taken out of Christmas when the holiday became the major driver of annual retail profits, and that happened a long time ago. It’s just more accented every single year.
• All of the “happy holidays” rhetoric is so transparently about Christmas. It’s so not about Chanukah, which as anyone with even a passing familiarity with Jewish culture knows, is not one of the Jewish high holidays. It’s been elevated primarily by its proximity to Christmas on the Calendar. And who the hell celebrates Kwanzaa? Not a person that I’ve ever met.

There are Christians out there who think that they are “oppressed” in some way here in the United States. They really, really, really, really, really do not know anything about oppression. As an alternative viewpoint, I submit the following:

• Gays have really been oppressed in the United States. They used to (and sometimes still do) get the shit beat out of them. Just from 1970 alone, Wikipedia has cataloged 141 separate incidents of violence, many of which resulted in murder. And those are just the incidents that made it into Wikipedia.
• Jews have, of course, been the victims of the Holocaust. But even since the Holocaust, Jews have been regularly discriminated against in the United States. Although this discrimination is no longer as nakedly violent as the ongoing discrimination against gays, there is a long and sordid history of antisemitism in the United States, also nicely chronicled by Wikipedia.

And Christians? They can be upset about Starbucks not putting Christian iconography on their holiday cups.

Or about judicial decisions disallowing the state of Alabama to put the 10 Commandments into their court houses.

Or about generic holiday displays being included in manger scenes.

Get a life people!