The Red Cups

I’m now at a super active Starbucks on Cornmarket Street, the consumer ghetto of Oxford. It’s 5.5pm, it’s fairly packed and fairly loud. There’s some implicit obligation or assumption that when in Europe, you don’t go to Starbucks, you go to some better place, somewhere European. Yeah sure, I’ve been there. It wasn’t better. The reason I’m at Starbucks is primarily because they now have red Christmas cups, and secondarily because I don’t know any other place that make caramel macchiatos.

A French Starbucks dude just told me that they’re “closing this part of the café in ten minutes.” “This part” is utterly ambiguous, and I can’t help but wonder if “this part” refers only to the space that I occupy. Well, he actually means the 2nd floor, which I so enjoy (referred to by the British as the 1st floor, of course). The small downstairs area is open ‘til the late red-eyed hour of 6:30pm, when the more sensible among us are tucked away under plaid bed sheets, dreaming of multinational coffee corporations.

Anyway, I need to return to the reason I’m at the ‘bucks (the irony of “bucks” being part of the name has only recently been conveyed to my slow slow mind, by the way). The. Red. Cups. I noticed a small sign when I entered, which displayed the crimson cardboard in all it’s holy glory, and announced “THEY’RE HERE.” These cups, a recurring thing, are new to me. I’m only assuming they do this every winter. Where was I last year, and before? Well, not drinking many coffee related beverages in those medieval days, and if I was, it was at the venerable Moonbean’s, which I referred to as Moonbeams, because I was a naïve youth. So, red cups. Part of the red cup majesty is in the timing --- right after Halloween. Halloween isn’t too huge in England, though they had some tempting Frankenstein candies near the register, now replaced with Santas. And there isn't anything between Halloween and Christmas, so any post-pumpkin day is marked as belonging to the xmas season (pronounced ex-mas). We have Thanksgiving in the States, of course, but that’s really just a filler holiday that we just use to survive the post-Halloween pre-Christmas gray month of November. No one really cares about pilgrims and turkeys, and the 'thankfulness' sentiment returns FULL BLAST come Christmas time. (But, to briefly digress, making those paper buckle pilgrim hats and hand turkeys in grade school was a true delight). I think there might be an English holiday in November, but if there is, it certainly has no aesthetic associations.

My point here, my thesis, centered on red cups, is that Halloween and Christmas, these days of Heaven and Hell, are the season's, nay, the YEAR’S, only real holidays. (That was eight commas, if you were counting). Any days pertaining to respecting people and things are well and good, but my primary focus in life is utter gluttony, of course. Now, the idea of a Halloween-themed coffee cup is completely scintillating, and my eyes glow like a jack-o-lantern’s at the thought, but there are too many people unwilling to endorse that beloved day of the damned. Christmas, it seems, has pretty good public support. That's my perception. Personally, Santa, Satan, Stan, I embrace them all. (Saying that I “personally embrace” Satan makes it sound like I’m copping a feel of our dark lord, but I didn’t mean that. He does that gangsta handshake/hug combo, anyway. You knew that). 7,500 words later, and I haven’t stated why I like the red cups. They have elves or some lovely crap like that on ‘em. Shit, I don’t know, they’re Christmas cups, and that means it’s Christmas time, goddammit.