Over the years, I got used to the "Happy Holidays" campaign over "Merry Christmas." There used to be a time when those two terms were essentially one in the same, but nowadays they are mutually exclusive. I make it a point to tell somebody "Merry Christmas" in the month of December. Why? Because I celebrate Christmas. If you want to wish me a Happy Hanukkah, that's fine too, or Kwanzaa, or even
Festivus. I won't be offended (promise). However, it confuses me that department stores will go all out to decorate with trees, ornaments, and even the occasional Santa Claus...yet will balk at the prospect of the word "Christmas" in their stores. "Not everybody celebrates Christmas," they say. While that may be true, let's not kid ourselves. I don't see any menorah's in your halls, nor do I see any other symbology from one of the other Winter holidays. I've have told many a non-celebrator to have a Merry Christmas, and it's OK.
So why am I bringing this up in April? Reports from a
school in Seattle (thanks to a student who called into a radio program in the great northwest) are that now Easter eggs are under attack. Let's not call them Easter Eggs, oh no. We have to call them "Spring Spheres."
WHAT???????
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| Do these look like spheres to you? |
OK, this is now beyond ridiculous. The whole reason Christmas is under attack from the PC police is mostly due to the commercialization, and that signs of Christmas are everywhere in the month of December. Easter is not even 1/10 as commercialized as Christmas. So while Christmas gets neutralized, the PC police have generally left alone Easter. This girl wanted to give a class of third graders some Easter Eggs as part of a service project she was doing. However, the teacher of that class told her that she had to call them "Spring Spheres" instead. First of all, this teacher must not know basic math. Eggs are not spheres. How do you get off calling eggs spheres? I could go into complex formulas for area and volume and use deductive reasoning here to prove my point, but I'll just let the picture do the talking instead. Second, and this is the major point here, when the kids got their "Spring Spheres," THEY KNEW EXACTLY WHAT THEY WERE! They got excited over receiving Easter Eggs. What third grader wouldn't (free candy...duh!)?
It doesn't stop there. Easter Egg hunts and rolls are slowing starting to drop the "Easter" part of there titles with something more "spring-like." This is a travesty. It's one thing to go after a holiday that has been completely commercialized, and that's bad enough. However, you don't see department stores decking themselves out every March and April with eggs, rabbits, baskets, and scenes of the empty tomb. Don't you have better things to worry about?
Happy Easter, blogosphere!
I agree. This is an unacceptable distortion of the Biblical tale of Jesus coaxing the Easter Bunny out of his hole (despite being afraid of its shadow), helping squeeze colorful eggs out of the Bunny's butt, and then hiding them all over Jerusalem for the little Hebrews and Shebrews to find, for which they'd be rewarded with a chocolate rendition of the aforementioned bunny. (Mark 8:20-40, if I recall correctly)
ReplyDeleteBut all humor aside. Nick, you know full well that there is no religious symbolism to Spring Spheres. They are symbols of fertility, and are a holdover from the ancient pagan spring fertility festivals that were inexplicably tied to the myth of the resurrection of Christ. You should WELCOME the decoupling of these unrelated symbols. And really, if we're naming Easter Eggs for what they are, they should be called "Breeding Balls."
I should clarify that it is equally silly to rename Easter Eggs as for them to be associated with Easter in the first place. Even so, your outrage is sillier still.
ReplyDeleteAnd finally, I want to wish you a happy fucking season. May you be fruitful and multiply, just as the pagans intended!
ReplyDeleteI find it kind of odd that you use religious precedents to smear Christian traditions. Just saying.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, yes I am aware that the Christians used pagan tradtions to establish their own (Easter Eggs, Christmas on Dec. 25 to celebrate the Winter Solstice, etc.) However, if you put it in context, Christianity has been around since 313 AD (you'll get a penny if you can tell me why I picked that year). However, pagan religions had been around for much longer. So, the Christians needed ideas for their own traditions. They borrowed some from Judaism, others from other religions. Perhaps Josh would be better able to articulate this than I can, but I don't see why it is necessary to slam present-day Catholicism (and Christianity in general) just because the earliest Christians borrowed some ideas from religions that had been established for much longer.
Let's just talk about how retarded it is that they named them 'spheres', when eggs are not spheres, as our humble blogger points out. So not only are they being idiotically PC, but they can't even get the geometry right.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, all of this 'Easter is pagan' stuff is just a little more of 'a little knowledge being a dangerous thing'. First of all, English is the only language that uses the word 'Easter' for the day of celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus; almost every other language uses some variation of the word Pesach or Passover. Italy does eggs at that time, but they are called Uova di Pasqua. Nothing to indicate paganism there, except the fact that English has sort of a linguistic accident with the word 'Easter'.
313 is the year that Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, which allowed for the free practice of religion (for Christians and non-Christians alike) in Roman territories. I want my penny. And I'll give you two if you can tell me what prompted Constantine's conversion, which culminated in baptism just before his death.
ReplyDeleteAnd Josh, I wasn't saying "Easter is pagan," I was saying that the symbolism of Easter is pagan. And it is. Eggs were a pagan symbol of fertility and rebirth, which early Christian fathers co-opted into the resurrection. My point is that it's just as goofy for Nick to get bent out of shape over renaming them as it is for them to be associated with the resurrection in the first place. Nick, I'm not "slamming" modern Christianity, either. I'm just pointing out that you're getting upset because you hold something sacred (Easter eggs being called "Easter eggs") that has no sacred symbolism in your religion, other than the convenience of substituting a pagan symbol for a Christian one (which, no doubt, was done to alleviate the conversion process of pagans to Christianity - a "look, we use the same symbols as you so you only have to change what you chant, and not what you see" kinda thing).
And in German the word used is "Ostern," which is from the same derivative from which "Easter" comes - Anglo-Saxon language is, after all, of Germanic origin. And the fact that most, if not all, of the Romance languages use a word derived for the Hebrew word for Passover further confuses the holiday. Is it a celebration of the resurrection of Christ, or a celebration of the final plague and the exodus from Egypt? That the Germanic languages broke from the Jewish origins and make a decidedly different word for the decidedly different holiday makes more sense than to call it "Passover." That their new name for it was based on a pagan goddess is unfortunate. Methinks we pious three should start a revolution, divorcing the festival of the resurrection from both its pagan and Jewish origins, with which it shares little if anything in common, and come up with a new name befitting an independent holiday. I'm gonna throw out RezzFest - ResurrectionFest.
Well, you are never going to be able to separate the Resurrection from Passover; indeed, the Paschal Mystery makes absolutely zero sense outside of the context of the Pesach - sacrificial lamb, Lamb of God, etc. etc.
ReplyDeleteFor those in the Western Soviet of Seattle, it's amazing that tolerance only extends to those they want; 'Easter', apparently, is proselytizing, and we just can't have any of that!
ReplyDeleteI will claim the two pennies for the scene at Milvian Bridge in the year 312. However, there are many differing accounts of his vision, so I won't recount them here, but it suffices to say that he fought the battle under the banner of the Christian God and prevailed, eventually prompting the Edict of Milan and his deathbed baptism.