Christmas Coffee Cups

A few posts ago, I was ranting about coffee cups and Christmas as a marketing ploy.  Thinking about it, it’s only natural that coffee shops should have seasonal cups.  They’ve been trying to personalise the coffee experience, just like the cola companies have been trying to, and so no wonder that they changed the design of their beverage containers to make us think ‘ahhh, lovely, let me guzzle this and go out and buy another, this is fun!’.

It does lead me to wonder why the hell aren’t these people making a bit more of an effort during the rest of the year.  Christmas is not the main Christian holiday, Easter is, and so why don’t we have special; designs for Easter.  Or for other seasons or holiday, God knows the shops seem pretty bloody keen to sell us stuff related to Halloween, why not cups and cola cans too.  (Honourable exception here, Krispy Kreme, they make one hell of an effort.  I don’t know what’s in that orange icing they use, but it’s practically a legal high).

Given the drive for personalisation of your gulping experience by cola companies and coffee shops alike it is unsurprising that they seek to make the experience special with a seasonally decorated beverage holder.

Gentleman & Player’s favourite though is, you will be unsurprised to learn, the Waitrose coffee cup.

Let’s pause for a second to consider the Waitrose beverage.  If you have a ‘My Waitrose’ card (which is one of those customer loyalty cards that allows, depending on your point of view, either you to get reward points and vouchers and special offers or for the store to build up a profile of you based on your shopping meaning they know what you eat, what you drink, when you go on holiday, what birth control you use, when you menstruate, and can sell all this to, in ascending order of dreadfulness, other companies, foreign powers or Our Own Government!) you can get a free tea or coffee every day.  The idea is of course that you go in there thinking ‘just a free coffee, just a free coffee’, start getting your coffee, think ‘must…be…strong’ and then exit with at the very least a pastry and more likely a 42 inch telly.  Such is the acknowledged power of going to the shops for a bottle of HP sauce and coming back with an HP printer.

The Waitrose seasonal coffee cup is…it’s…well…it’s very Waitrose.  It’s a white reindeer and seasonal scene on a green background.

Two things.

Firstly, tradition.  Apparently, before the evil elves at the marketing department of a certain cola company got busy, the traditional colours of Christmas were green and white, not red and white.  This makes sense, as we have green Christmas trees in the house and the only red traditionally on offer is the breast of a robin and the claret spilled during the traditional family punch up (always after the Queen’s Speech, we’re not savages).

Secondly, it’s just so very classy and understated.

But surely they can do more.  Costa have four different characters, with the occasional variation, Waitrose can turn a cup into a collectable.

Obviously, a simple red dot on the snout of the animal turns a random reindeer into a beloved character.

A tartan bow, and we have a wee ‘Monarch of the Glen’ moment.

For our American Friends, who think nature is best admired when mounted on the wall of their double-wide trailer, a cross hairs on the forehead.  Actually, that’s the Scottish stalking method, if it’s an American, it’ll be a green haze and a line of print along the bottom that reads ‘cluster bomb option selected’.

I actually rather liked the Waitrose coffee cup.  Possibly because it was full of free coffee but probably because it was astatically pleasing.  The reindeer in question actually looked quite jolly, the green (Waitrose corporate colour though it was) was understated but festive, and appropriate, it was the sort of green you might encounter in nature.  Possibly in woods where fir trees grow.  Possibly at night, armed with a hacksaw, I couldn’t possibly comment.

Merry February

Post Christmas

During the festive season, friends and family are greeted with the question ‘keeping up the Christmas?’, meaning: ‘it is ten o’clock in the morning, with the day now in double figures, have you had a drink yet?’. Keeping up the Christmas conveys well the situation when it comes to food and drink at this time of year. Essentially the last normal meal anyone has is Christmas dinner, thereafter everyone just tucks into what is essentially a thinning selection of leftovers until it is time to supplement it with cheese, ham, pickle and of course, a constant flow of booze.

Certainly the Christmas season was extended this year. Thanks to the snow in December bringing postal deliveries to a grinding halt, people were still getting the Christmas cards and presents delivered in mid-January.

One of the odder ways in which a Christmas continuation manifests itself is the availability of Christmas branded stuff after Christmas. I’m not talking about actual Christmas leftovers, no, they are all reduced in price by about 75% and fly of the shelves as hoards of shoppers pick up cards, wrapping and baubles, baubles, baubles. What I mean is the ordinary stuff that, around Christmas time, is sold in Christmas packaging, cola being the prime example. In December the familiar red and white can usually sports a grinning bloke in a beard and this is all very jolly in the count down to Christmas. Mid-January though, when the vending machine is still spitting out cans decorated with bewhiskered old men, all it serves to do is to turn the January blues positively indigo.

This year much was made of the early appearance of Easter eggs in the shops. This was a good way of getting a lot of free publicity and was also excellent for those us who were going into chocolate withdrawal by 29 December after all the selection boxes had been emptied, chocolate coins cashed in and things were getting so desperate that one starts eyeing up the chocolate with nuts in it.

With Easter eggs being available in December and the weather in April sometimes including a festive looking dusting of snow, there is I think a justification for making novelty chocolate snowmen available at Easter.

Then again, perhaps the attitude to adopt to ensure a smooth transition from one religious holiday to another is to say sod the chocolate and crack open the sherry.