It occurs to me that Bill O'Reilly and other members of the paranoid right have managed to totally miss the boat when it comes to figuring out who is responsible for the whole overblown "War on Christian Holidays" thing. They've focused their venom against the ACLU and anyone else who wants the religious message kept out of any governmental acknowledgment of the holiday. The people who just want to be able to celebrate Christmas and Easter as secular holidays aren't the ones that they should blame. They should, if they are going to be angry at anyone, focus their wrath against those who actually made it possible to celebrate Christmas and Easter as something other than a religious event.
Look, I've read the Bible, and there's nothing in there about a really, really fat guy trying to squeeze down a skinny little chimney with a massive sack of cheap, plastic toys. The only mention of rabbits that I can think of isn't in the New Testament - it's way back in the food laws section of Leviticus. In that passage, the rabbit is not identified as a distributor of painted eggs; it's misidentified as an animal that "chews the cud" (it's chewing something, folks, but it ain't cud).
If the Christian Right wants to get angry at anyone about the secularization of Christian holidays, it should be the people who secularized them in the first place. Those fine folks who make the cards at Hallmark come to mind. Mattel Toys probably bears some of the blame for the whole secular Christmas thing, along with Toys'R'Us. If you're looking for a specific target for Easter blame, maybe you should complain about the folks who make the Cadbury Cream Eggs, or those disgusting little Peeps.
2 comments:
The late, great Bill Hicks had a wonderful routine w/r/t the Easter Bunny.
(paraphrasing)
"Wait a second...you celebrate the death and resurrection of your Lord and Savior by...telling your children...that...a rabbit hides Easter eggs on your lawn. Is that what you're telling me? I mean, come on. How did you settle on that? Why didn't you say something like...oh, I don't know...a goldfish left...Lincoln Logs....in your sock drawer! I mean, hey, at least that has miraculous connotations!
(voice of British child) Look, mummy! The Easter goldfish left Lincoln Logs in me sock drawer! Huzzah!
(voice of British adult, reverential in tone) Yes, child...that's the story of Jesus."
-dan
Hey, why not go straight to the source. It was (I assume) the Catholic Church that decided to co-opt all these pagan festivals for Christian celebrations - shouldn't O'Reilly be sending angry letters to the Pope over this?
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