Starbucks Holiday Cups Are Out, Time To Spread Some Cheer

It's November (whoa), and Starbucks is releasing its roster of holiday cups tomorrow. There's four of them. Two of them are adorned with the phrase "Carry the Merry." Merry indeed.

"Our thought behind the cups this year was about people carrying them out in the world as messengers of joy," said Jeff Wilkson, creative director for Starbucks, in a press release shared by CNN. "Carry the Merry" sounds better than "Merry Coffee," in our humble opinion.

Starbucks will give away reusable cups tomorrow for free to customers who order one of its seasonal drinks either in person at its U.S. locations or via delivery. The drinks include a lineup of returning champs: eggnog latte, peppermint mocha, chestnut praline latte, toasted white chocolate mocha, and a caramel brulee latte, along with a Christmas blend coffee. Holiday snacks will also join the festivities, like a sugar plum cheese danish, a snowman cookie, a new cranberry orange scone, and a cake pop. (Always a cake pop.)

The seasonal cup tradition began in 1997. Remember the cup controversy in the ancient year of 2015, when Starbucks changed its plain white cup to a red one, causing people to get riled up and accuse Starbucks of engaging in the "war on Christmas?" Ah, the good old days, when we didn't know what fun was coming later.

This article from Starbucks in 2017 goes through 20 years of cups that were stashed away by former Starbucks designer Sandy Nelson. They started off in a purple color, then morphed into various jolly combinations of red, white, and green. If you're a Starbucks coffee cup fanatic, you'd better get on it quick tomorrow. There's a limited amount of the reusable ones, and knowing freebies, they'll be gone in a slurp. Just a reminder to avoid burning your mouth because that coffee is hot.