Existential Spices

Coffee and the Quest for Fulfillment

The early days of Pumpkin Spice Lattes

“To everything there is a season,” wrote King Solomon, “and a time. A time for rhubarb, and a time for peppermint, a time for cold foam, and a time for hot chocolate.”

Ok, King Solomon didn’t say that last part. I did. But the point stands. To everything, including flavors, especially flavors, there is a season. In the coffee industry, one encounters this truth often, and I, as a part time barista, have personally borne witness to the meteoric rise and fall of “seasonal flavors.” So it should be. Such is right and proper.

And there is a time—yes, there really is a time—for Pumpkin Spice Lattes.

I love Pumpkin Spice Lattes. I know they’ve racked up a reputation as “basic” among meme-generators and comedians and people that hate other people’s enjoyment of something delightful. And I suppose I understand; like any trend, their prominence leaves them open to mockery. But they’re also unbelievably delicious, or they would never have gained a fervent devotion of the intensity that would inspire most pastors to take notes. I have no quarrel with Pumpkin Spice qua Pumpkin Spice.

My quarrel is with this pervasive notion that Pumpkin Spice is a right. That because you pulled out the plaid poncho and tall boots, Pumpkin Spice, too, must be at your beck and call.

The time for Pumpkin Spice, the season in which it dwells—reigneth, e’en—in tawny glory, is fall. Fall proper.

It was not a month and a half ago, but you wouldn’t have known that from the amount of autumn enthusiasts bearing down on the nation’s coffee purveyors like flannel-clad Huns the moment the temperature dipped below 75. And it is to these people that I address myself when I say: pumpkins do not spring into season just because you saw a leaf fall.

If you’re feeling all “life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall,” before any actual crispening has taken place, get yourself a pedicure and pick an autumnal color. Colors are available all year round, you can do whatever you want with them. But do not demand that the rest of the world participate in your headlong gallop into fall. Do not assume that they, like you, are incapable of resting in the melancholy of summer’s waning, of accepting its slow decline as an integral element of life.

At one point, I was willing to dismiss the unseasonal hue and cry for Pumpkin Spice as a sort of innocent eagerness—a child begging for a second helping of dessert, pounding their little fists on the table, kicking their little feet. Who hasn’t been that kicking, screaming little kid, wanting something that they can’t have? I’ve personally had to hold back tears watching the last ant-on-the-log disappear from a snack tray before it reached me.

We’ve all read Rapunzel. “If I don’t get some of that rampion, I know I shall die,” said Rapunzel’s mother, and even though she wasn’t actually going to die, being a drama queen, she felt like she was, and her husband, being both a drama queen and a pushover, felt like she was, and the witch capitalized on the strength of both those feelings to extract a promise that ultimately led to disaster, only mitigated by the power of True Love.

But I digress.

Or do I? Is the craving for Pumpkin Spice before its time a mere innocent desire, or does it point to a deep, dark inability to cope, the same inability that led to poor Rapunzel getting raised by a witch in the woods?

There is an aggressive demand lurking beneath the smiles of the customers that ask, “when are you guys starting your Pumpkin Spice?” An unspoken, “It had better be soon, or else.” And I ask you: or else, what? What would you do, if we did not roll out Pumpkin Spice before October 1? Settle for the cinnamon? Be forced to frequent a different coffee shop for a month? One that has capitulated to your psychotic need to define your entire personality through your consumption of a Fall Flavor, full one month before its time?

What is at the root of this unmastered need for an unseasonal season-defining accessory? I have come to the conclusion that it is not love, it is not “being a fall person.” No. The Pumpkin Spice fanatics are driven by fear: the terrible fear of waiting.

And I know something about fear. The only way out is through. So next year, when August and the ensuing panic hits, I have a challenge for you. If you are the person that is making coffee-shop owners everywhere betray their deepest values—restraint, presence, patience, all the qualities that, deep down, make you love them and their coffee—I ask you to stop for a moment, to sit, and to ask yourself, “Why?”

Sit in the moment of emptiness and terror that stretches before you as you picture a month without either the verdant green of summer, or the russet splendor of fall. It is a fearful prospect, this in-between time. I know. Your heart may grow cold, the blood may pound in your ears, but I ask you again, to Stop. Sit. Think.

But how will I live without it? You may say. I know. I won’t give you an easy answer. It will be painful.

But what if it never comes? You and I both know that’s silly. It will.

Take a deep breath. Be present in your surroundings. There will be sunflowers blooming on the roadsides, the leaves of the walnut trees will have begun to yellow, the fields will be a riotous sea of Queen Anne’s Lace.

“But what will I eat?!” you may wail. “I want a quintessential fall flavor, and I want it now!”

Try something different. Zucchini bread, for example. Hie thee to a farmer’s market, and take a look around. What flavors are the especial purview of September? The answers may surprise and delight you.

And before you know it, you’ll have made it! October will come—as she always does—and that Pumpkin Spice is going to taste all the sweeter, for as Rapunzel’s prince learned, the reward is in the waiting. And what’s the worst that happened to him?

Shoot, you know your fairytales. Fine, blindness and an extended period of wandering the earth, but that’s an extreme example. In your case, it’s going to be a delicious latte.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s high time I wrap up this lecture. The Peppermint Mocha is calling, and I must go.

This essay first appeared under the headline “A Season for all Seasons” in the Fall ‘24 edition of Trivium Magazine—jam-packed with autumnal bliss. For more information, check out their website, or head over to The Beauty of Simple Things here on Substack.—CC