Call it a tempest in a coffee cup.

Starbucks Coffee had the unmitigated gall to introduce their Christmas cups in shades of red and green, sans any seasonal adornments. This means no Christmas-related decorations, either religious or secular.

Why did the world’s largest coffee retailer opt for design devoid of anything Christmas, save the color scheme?

Who knows. Who cares.

But, apparently there are a bunch of folks who do care. They are calling this an affront to the real meaning of Christmas and an attack on Christianity.

Presumably, this is an effort by Starbucks to take Christ out of Christmas. Surely, it can’t be purely a design thing along the lines of the rolls of Christmas wrapping paper that are only color coded.

This is really much ado about nothing.

There have been efforts for decades to erode the “reason for the season.” Major retailers were putting up Christmas displays in early September and the airwaves are already filled with Black Friday specials and moronic parodies of Christmas songs.

Folks, the over commercialization of Christmas ship has already sailed. If we want to be offended by the way corporate America observes the holidays, then we should have been outraged long ago.

Ironically, this controversy is only going to make this worse by driving customers to Starbucks coffee shops, thus commercializing the season even more.

As a side note, when we see horrific incidents like the terrorist attacks in Paris and the sad events that have torn families apart here locally, it makes coffee cups and lousy Christmas ad jingles seem pretty insignificant.

Dale Hogg