Bunnies, Eggs, and Nonsense

                                                                                 

Happy Easter!  Jesus rising from the dead and whatnot.  Very important religious holiday for the Christians.  Churchy things happening – praying and singing and all that business. 

Here’s my dilemma with this particular holiday:  how the bloody hell did the bunnies and colored eggs and chocolate treats get mixed into the rising of the central prophet of an entire religion?!  To be honest, the bunnies, at least, make a bit of sense.  I think we all know that the Christians mixed up their dates in order to get the druids and pagans on board a couple thousand years ago, so the celebration of the vernal equinox (thus the procreation and abundance of bunnies) sort of fits into that messing together of traditions.

But Easter baskets?  And gifts?  And jelly beans?  And dying eggs?  That’s all a bunch of capitalistic American nonsense which seems intended to get more people to celebrate a holiday which has no business being advertised at Target, if you know what I mean. 

How can a religious person possibly believe that Christ rose from the dead on Easter, God’s only son being physically escorted to heaven by his father, and then subsequently celebrate such a consecrated event with brunch and chocolate figures of bunnies?  It seems to send the wrong sort of message to the younger ones, if you ask me.  (Which no one did, of course)

If the only way to get little kids excited about God ascending back into heaven is to stuff them full of sugar and ply them with gifts, then the religious ideology behind the whole event seems lost.  Why not just have two celebrations: one for the beginning of spring, and one for Jesus? 

I’ll never know.  I just watched a documentary about some people in Mexico who celebrate Easter by strapping homemade, paper mache animals loaded with explosives on their heads and running through the local streets.  That makes about as much sense as hiding plastic, colored eggs in the bushes for little kids to find.  Probably a bit less blood in the Americanized version of events, but pointless just the same.