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Saturday, March 26, 2005

Happy what?

In a way, this is one of my least favorite times of year. It's not the rain, it's not the chill in the air, it's certainly not the longer days or the green grass or the wildflowers everywhere -- it's the darn bunnies.

You can't go three steps in our town this weekend without being told "Happy Easter". And therein lies the problem. We don't celebrate Easter, for reasons that are pretty important to us (more on that in a minute) but it's to the point where we just gloss over the comment and move on, rather than trying to explain it. Unless people start pestering the kids about it, and then we'll usually go into it a little. Here's what we tell them.

• The name itself, "Easter", is derived from the name of a Babylonian queen (the wife of Nimrod), who was revered as a goddess of fertility in Babylonian "mystery religion". She was originally known as Semiramis but later became known as Ishtar.
  
• Bunnies and eggs have nothing to do with the resurrection of Christ. They are, however, pagan symbols of fertility. (and besides, the Cadbury creme ones are really gross.) I know some people see them as symbols of "new life" and equate that with the Resurrection -- but we don't see a need to stretch them in that direction.
  
• Even the date is not Scriptural in its origins. Ordinarily "Easter" is celebrated on the Sunday after Passover, which is in fact the Sunday on which Christ was resurrected. However, that's just an ornate kind of coincidence, since the actual determination of the date of Easter is that it is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. This year Passover is in late April, but Easter is in late March.
  

We do commemorate the Resurrection. We just don't do it with egg hunts and baskets of candy (this doesn't keep me from overdosing on chocolate during this time of year, however. ;). And this year, we won't be doing it when most people do.

I'm not posting this to say that I'm holier than anyone else, or to imply that Christians who dress up their daughters tomorrow morning and go to an egg hunt after church are unspiritual slackers who don't love Jesus. These are just our family's personal convictions about this one particular issue. Comments and questions about them are welcome.