LUV & HAT

LUV - Do you know why Coca-Cola’s “the holidays are coming” Christmas campaign never really took off in the UK? Apart from the fact that we don’t call it “the holidays” over here? Or that their weird photo-realistic Polar Express-style animated Santa is a bit, well, rapey? Or that, in the UK at least, the sight of a honking convoy of aggressively branded trucks thundering over the horizon isn’t that festive and generally means that a PC World is about to be plonked inelegantly on an English heritage site?

It’s because Coca-Cola don’t make gingerbread and eggnog flavoured drinks.

If they did, we’d go mad for them. We’d all be tromping sweatily down the street, suckling on our bottles of caramelised eggy ginger fizz, defiantly togged out in furry deerstalkers, snoods and Ugg boots in the 18 degree weather and giving coy little nods of approval to all the other insufferable indie hipsters doing the same. Newsagents would sell out. There’d be riots in Shoreditch. Ineffectual, asymmetrical, Fairisle riots.

But Coca-Cola don’t, and Starbucks do. Because they’re clever.

Starbucks know, for instance, that everyone likes their coffee drinking to be serenaded by the screams of children called Fabian and Willow, and by the downbeat music of those with tragic histories of substance abuse. Starbucks know that people like to negotiate the consumption of complicated drinks and fiddly cakes from uncomfortable leather chairs that place you two arms’ length from your food, so that men in wire-rimmed glasses tut at you for interrupting their BlackBerry-based porn appreciation.

Most importantly, Starbucks know that a) no one really likes the taste of coffee. I mean, have had coffee? It’s WELL BITTER. b) If you put something in a red cup and make it taste like gingerbread, at least one person on the internet will go “squee!” and do all your marketing for you.

But, clever as they are, Starbucks are missing a trick. Climate change means that UK weather is getting milder generally. All the seasons are starting to blur together in a damp nothingy mess. So, building on what they’ve done with Christmas, Starbucks should help us discern the seasons turning by adding a new flavour for every one.

In the summer, Starbucks coffee could taste of Piz Buin, EasyJet Speedy Boarding and Chlamydia. Starbucks coffee in spring could taste like daffodils and unexpected bouts of flu. Autumn could taste of leaf mould, wet trouser cuffs and disrupted train services.

But winter? Starbucks have got winter and Christmas all wrapped up. Well done, them. Squee, etc.
- Robyn Wilder

HAT - Look, I love Christmas. I love it tremendously. Now that the clocks have gone back, all I want to do is mull the shit out of everything in sight and then sob at a string of sickeningly sentimental films. I love Christmas. I’m looking forward to going Christmas shopping, even though that’ll basically involve standing in Debenhams and having my ribs decimated by elbows. I’ve already made a Christmas playlist. It’s only just November. But I can’t help it. I love Christmas. Cut me and I bleed tinsel.

But Starbucks Christmas? No. Starbucks Christmas can go away and fuck itself.

Starbucks can go away and fuck itself most of the time, the aggressively-marketed, faux-aspirational, Feist-liking, sugar-pushing bellend. But at Christmas, Starbucks can go away and fuck itself extra hard with a jaggedy bucket of frozen pineapples. At the most wonderful time of the year, Starbucks is - without exaggeration - the most violently awful place in the world.

First of all, there’s its marketing strapline. Let’s Merry. Let’s. Merry. What the actual fuck does that even MEAN? You’re missing a verb, you caffeine-drenched, cod-alternative shitbags. Presumably you mean Let’s Be Merry, but since you haven’t made that clear it’s up to us to insert one of our own. So what about Let’s Stab Merry? Let’s Shit Merry? Let’s Go Out Of Our Way To Avoid Merry?

That said, part of me wants Starbucks to adopt this linguistic tic for the rest of the year. Starbucks: Let’s Nausea or Starbucks: Let’s Nagging Sensation That You’re Probably Wasting Your Life has a nice ring to it, you have to admit.

But mainly it’s the range of Starbucks Christmas drinks that hacks me off. No, it’s not even that. It’s your reaction to it. That’s right. Yours. It’s you who pisses me off. If you’ve ever breathlessly updated your Twitter timeline with anything like ‘OMG! GINGERBREAD LATTE! NOM NOM NOM!’ then you should understand that I hate you. If you’ve ever squealed about drinking coffee from a slightly different-coloured cup than normal or - worse - physically posed for a photo with a red Starbucks cup like this unrepentant dickhead, then you should know that I have difficulty understanding why you’re even alive.

Because it’s a cup, you prick. It’s a CUP. It’s just a cup. You’re getting excited about a cup. Your parents hate you, you know. “We had such big plans for you” they secretly think. “But then you started getting excited about cups and we realised you were basically a remedial-level fuckup.” A cup. It’s a fucking cup. I hate Starbucks, I hate Christmas and I hate you.
- Stuart Heritage