Joy to the World, the Latte has come

At the Part-Time Job, the Christmas spirit is in full-swing. There are two large Christmas trees festooned with ornaments, Christmas CDs on display (though mercifully not playing), and walls painted red for the holiday season. I approach this "Halloween's over and Thanksgiving's just a speed-bump, let's head full-bore for Christmas" mentality with caution, since I know it's just a clever trick to make me buy more stuff, but I do love sparkly ornaments, A Christmas Story, and my ex-coworker's homemade Christmas CDs (he rips great songs off his vinyl and gives them to us). But my favorite thing about the approach of the holiday season has to be the triumphant return of the Gingerbread and Eggnog Lattes to Starbucks.

::twitches::

Today, I saw the sign on the wall in Starbucks and rejoyed in the glory of the Lord of bad-for-you, high-calorie coffee drinks. It's sweet, has a slight kick from the ginger... why do I have to explain it to you? Just go buy one. I know, Starbucks is all that's wrong with America, chain behemoth, indie coffee shops fall like prop Japan under Godzilla's foot, yadda yadda. Show me an independent coffee shop with a superior holiday drink and I will gladly buy it. But for my self-indulgent coffee dollar, Starbucks wins. As the wonderful Sars said over at Tomato Nation:

I want to marry the gingerbread latte at Starbucks and make an honest coffee out of it. The gingerbread latte at Starbucks is better than crack. It's so much better than crack that even crack itself is like, "Hey, I'm just crack. That shit is caffeinated crack -- with whipped cream on it. Game over, man."

(Though for a great fall treat, try a chaider at Tealuxe. It's chai tea steeped in apple cider instead of milk. So good.)