I guess it was bound to happen. A public elementary school in Alabama has renamed its annual Easter Egg Hunt to avoid giving offense to non-Christian children and parents. According to the school’s principal, Lydia Davenport, the hunt will still take place; it will just no longer have the word “Easter” attached to it. The seasonal rabbit will likewise go nameless:
“Kids love the bunny,” smiles Davenport, “and we just make sure we don’t say ‘the Easter bunny’ so that we don’t infringe on the rights of others because people relate the Easter bunny to religion; a bunny is a bunny and a rabbit is a rabbit,” Davenport concluded.
Well, you can’t argue with that. Most disputes about public holiday displays in America involve Christmas, of course. This is so, I think, because Easter, although far more important as a religious holiday, is relatively minor as a public holiday. Perhaps that’s because it falls on a Sunday. Compared to Christmas, Easter passes by almost without notice in America. But there’s no reason we can’t fight over it as well. Let the Easter Wars begin.
The schools around here ignore Easter, although they do close for Good Friday (but not Passover). But everybody gets decked out in shamrocks for Saint “Patty’s” Day (when any Irishman worth his salt would spell it “Paddy’s”) and Cinco de Mayo is bigger than Christmas or the Fourth of July combined. Mexican flags for everybody! Yes, really. That’s public education in North Jersey.
Shouldn’t the politically correct rename the days of the week:
Sunday honors the sun goddess, Sunna.
Monday honors the moon goddess, Máni,
Tuesday means “Tiw’s day.” Tiw (Norse Týr) was a one-handed god associated with single combat. (This is also necessary to remove any violence from schools.)
Wednesday means the day of the Germanic god Wodan
Thursday honors the god Thor
Friday is the day of the Norse goddess Fríge.
Saturday is named after the Roman god Saturn.
(As a Christian, I can live with the names of the week, but we cannot allow the use of religious names for any school function.)
This numbskull actually did the right thing for the wrong reason. The bunny has nothing to do with Easter. In a post-Christian culture, I’ll take what they will give us.
Uh-oh I see a bunny shaped blip on the Prog anti-Christian radar. While Easter passes almost unnoticed outside US Christian communities and shopping malls, however, as you well know, Semana Santa (Holy Week) is the most observed holiday in Latin America. It is a very big deal, especially in Mexico where Holy Week is both a religious and a secular holiday. Most of Mexico has taken off this week and half of next to vacation and/or celebrate with family.
Watching the anti-Christian/anti-traditional family left paper over this particular cultural divide with Latino immigrants will be an interesting exercise in bribery and fecklessness, no?
The name Easter comes from the celebration of the Anglo-Saxon goddess Ēostre, goddess of the dawn and spring, and Hares (Easter Bunnies) and eggs were associated with her as fertility symbols. As the Christian and pagan celebrations occurred at roughly the same time in England, the celebrations eventually blended together.
In the rest of the world the Christian resurrection celebration is known by some derivative of Pasch or Pesach (the Latin and Hebrew forms of Passover).
So what this stupid woman has done in her zeal to suppress Christianity, is ban several Germanic pagan rituals and the name of a goddess instead.
Progressives and non-Christians want to have their cake and eat it too. They want the presents, candy, and fun activities of these celebrations while ignoring the religious message. Every one of the students at this school knows that the eggs are left by the Easter bunny; even those students whose parents don’t take them to church. I agree that the public schools should not celebrate any religious holiday. Just don’t have a celebration and pretend that is a newly discovered secular feast. If you want your children to have Christmas parties and Easter Egg Hunts, then either send you child to a private school, home school, or have the party at your own church.
Who are these people who are offended by calling the Easter Bunny the Easter Bunny? The story does’t say.