SEATTLE — Following outrage over the coffee giant’s decision to supplant its annual Christmas-themed snowflake paper cups with diabolical red ones, Starbucks has admitted to advancing a plot to lure customers into Satanic worship. The company is consequently halting the release of devil-themed holiday mugs, and it will abandon plans for a “Lucifer’s Delight” seasonal latte.

“The allegations that we wanted customers to unwittingly deny their Christian faith and invite Satan to commandeer their souls are totally founded,” said Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, dressed in a black robe and clutching a book written by Anton LaVey.

After initially getting customers to forget the “reason for the season,” Schultz and other executives planned on tricking them into drinking coffee, tea, and other hot beverages from mugs featuring an image of Baphomet, the all-knowing Sabbatic Goat, he says. Afterwards, the company would add to its menu a latte made from curdled milk and the blood of a virgin, spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg.

“We should have run our foul designs by a focus group, but we didn’t, and for that I apologize,” he added. “Number one rule in this game: never mix business with a ploy to usher in a 1000-year reign by the Lord of Darkness.”

Molly Kaliope, a longtime Starbucks customer from Edmonds, Washington, says that she knew something sinister was afoot when the team of baristas she had come to know well were suddenly replaced with ashen, non-communicative teens all sporting the same pentagram tattoo on their foreheads.

“No matter what name I gave them, they always scrawled the word ‘demon’ and drew all these occult symbols on my cup,” she said. “It was very unsettling. Then they started serving my venti skinny sugar-free mocha in a red paper vessel, and I knew that I was in the presence of pure evil.”

Schultz says that from now on, Starbucks executives will keep their personal lives — full of ritualistic mutilation and blood-soaked orgies — separate from their role as leaders of the world’s most successful coffee chain.

“Our share price has taken a huge hit,” he said. “Our shareholders are pissed off. An era of darkness is here, but not in the way we wanted.”