The War on Christmas season began early this year, with some honestly incomprehensible right-wing outrage over Starbucks’ insufficiently festive red holiday promotional cups.
The Starbucks cup outrage got a prominent new backer yesterday when Richard Land, the former political leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, said that Christians should boycott the coffee chain over the perceived snub.
Land was a guest on the Newsmax TV program hosted by former Arizona congressman J.D. Hayworth, who introduced the segment by playing a clip of the new Seth Rogen movie “The Night Before,” which Hayworth said was also part of the War on Christmas.
The Rogen movie, Hayworth said, is “raising a lot of concerns about Hollywood and the prevailing culture of the left, essentially trying to leave Christ out of Christmas or attack the whole notion of Christ at Christmas.”
On top of that, he said, “Christians get the feeling that Starbucks is waging a war on Christmas.”
“Starbucks has embraced the Left,” Hayworth told Land. “So much for diversity. Is it a big deal that they’ve gone to a red cup?”
“Well, for Christians it should be,” Land responded, “and it certainly will impact my patronage of Starbucks. You know, I’d probably have a chance to let them know, ‘By the way, I would have bought some coffee today if you had had a cup with Christmas ornaments on it or if you had a cup that was clearly Christmas, but I’m not, so that’s money you’ve lost.”
Land, riffing off a viral YouTube video in which a self-proclaimed evangelist said he got around a supposed Starbucks ban on saying “Merry Christmas” by giving his name as “Merry Christmas” to a barista, said that he would give his name as “Joseph, father of Jesus” in order to make Starbucks employees say the words.
