What We Learn from Pumpkin Spice Lattes

What We Learn from Pumpkin Spice Lattes September 15, 2014

We’re having a nice cool week here in New York, the kind that reminds you why this is a great, great place to be in the fall. So of course, it’s time to read about pumpkin spice lattes, and why they’re so popular:

Pumpkin Spice Lattes would not be a hit outside the “fall season” for the same reason you can’t stand that one neighbor who still has Christmas lights up in March: the PSL is seasonal, to be enjoyed within that season and within that season only. It is a symbol of change, an acceptance of what is, in many ways, the beginning of a new year. To take the seasonal novelty away from the PSL is essentially to take away the PSL.

Many people value seasons because they long for providence; in each person’s heart there is a simultaneous thirst for and dread of something untouched by human influence. Ecclesiastes 3 juxtaposes extremes—a time for killing and a time for healing. A time for being born and a time for dying. One is something desirable, the other something dreaded, and yet we crave seasons. We crave seasons not because we all enjoy change nor because we want something good to end, but because the acknowledgement of seasons, which are, on the whole, outside of human control, denotes a kind of providence we need, if not want. There is a certain providence in the idea of an assigned timing of things—an order of both good and bad.

Read the rest here at Christ & Pop Culture.


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