Posted on 03/21/2013 11:51:38 AM PDT by Kaslin
In our increasingly politically-correct society, Christmas isn’t the only holiday too hot to handle for school districts. Easter, another holiday rooted in Christian faith, is now being marginalized by governmental entities.
School districts and cities across America are holding “Spring egg hunts” and similar events, frequently omitting the word “Easter” from calendars and public announcements. Consider these:
• On March 16th, Flat Rock Elementary School in Anderson, South Carolina is holding a “Community Egg Hunt.”
• West Shore School District will be holding its “PTO Egg Hunt” on March 16th.
• New York’s East Meadow Schools will be holding its “Spring Egg Hunt” on March 19.
• The Prospect Heights Public Library District in Illinois is holding its “Spring Egg Hunt” on March 26th.
• California’s Manhattan Beach Unified School District has its “Spring Egg Hunt” in late March.
• The City of Upland, California will hold its “Spring Egg Hunt” March 30.
There are many, many more examples.
Does it matter that they’re detaching “Easter” from “egg hunts”? After all, the original significance of the day has nothing to do with bunnies, candy or hunting painted eggs.
It does, because “culturally sensitive” bureaucrats are further secularizing America by wiping Christian names off traditional community events.
Like Christmas, Easter has become increasingly commercialized. But by continuing to embrace the Christian rooting, we’re remembering the real reason for the holidays. As secular progressives remove the meaning, they’re becoming nothing more than Hallmark holidays and we’re becoming an increasingly ungrounded society.
Why is the government involved/wasting money on even the secular observance of a religious festival?
We get two of them here....
My grandkids ae 18 and 14. They still want an easter egg hunt. They love it.
The one at the White House (that has been canceled because of sequestration) was scheduled for MONDAY April Fool’s Day, just after Easter. I guess Obama likes to celebrate “the holiday season” and mixes up the traditions of each holiday.
Good point; let them have their pagan ritual, so Christian children realize that the Easter Bunny was simply to promote the idea that Christianity (and the Resurrection) was merely a rip-off fairy tale founded in ancient paganism.
My children grew up believing in Santa Claus because he was a real flesh-and-blood saint of the Church; we never included the “Easter Bunny” in our celebration of Easter.
April 1 has significance for Catholics as well; it is the day the Spanish Civil War ended (saving the Church from a Bolshevik purge).
Actually, the Orthodox Church uses red-dyed eggs on Pascha (Easter). They come out at the end of the Pascha service. For one thing, it’s to break the fast (no eggs throughout Lent). For another, it’s connected to an old tradition of Mary Magdalene using an egg to illustrate the resurrection to Tiberius Caesar. The legend says that the egg she used for this turned blood red in her hand.
I doubt that there’s any connection between this and Easter Eggs in the West, but it’s an odd coincidence.
I wish we could do Dyngus Day here.
But I seriously doubt these days girls would take too kindly to being woken up with a bucketful of water.
“Since when did an egg hunt have anything to do with Easter in the first place?”
A most excellent question, friend!! The root word from which Easter has been derived is the name of the old Teutonic goddess of spring, and pagan symbols of fertility rites and festivals i.e., eggs, newly hatched chickens, baby rabbits, and the like, unfortunately have been conflated with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, probably well intended to physically symbolize the marvel of the creation of new life while necessarily failing to parallel the Divine Miracle.
Colored eggs, cute baby chicks and bunnies and candy galore are all very nice and colorful, but only diffuse and interfere with a devout and joyful celebration of Christ’s victory over Death and Satan.
And I was as guilty as anyone of such confusion and distraction when my children were very young.
I think it’s difficult to try to understand in today’s context how old traditions worked as a way to bond people together.
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