Easter under attack (again)
By Michael J.W. Stickings
No, not really. It's just that Fox News is at it yet again with more paranoid fearmongering about how secularists are going after major Christian holidays like Easter. Year after year it's the War on Christmas, and then, when that dies down, the War on Easter. I'm curious to know when the War on Lent will begin. Perhaps next year. I intend to bring it up at the next meeting of the Greater Toronto Area chapter of Militant Secularists Against Christianity (MSAC), an international pro-Enlightenment organization to which I belong.
Okay, that's not entirely true. But what is true is the paranoid (and increasingly desperate) fearmongering at Fox News, a manifestation of the self-defining victims-R-us mentality that characterizes so much of the conservative movement.
Bill O'Reilly is sure to join the folk-flaunting fearmongering soon enough, but for now the chief fearmongerer is asshole extraordinaire John Gibson, the Fox host who played up the Obama-went-to-a-madrassa-and-may-be-a-terrorist non-story that had the right-wing bobbleheads drooling a while back. As Think Progress is reporting -- and, as usual, it has the video to back it up -- Gibson has been making a big deal out of certain (five-year-old) goings-on in Walnut Creek, California, where the Easter Bunny has been rebranded as the Spring Bunny.
Ooh. Aah. Will Christianity survive?
Gibson apparently has little faith that it will. "The question is why does the word Easter have to be expunged? Is this political correctness gone too far?"
I don't feel like getting into the whole Church-and-State thing here, but it seems, if I am to follow whatever fuzzy logic there may be here, that any attempt to divide Church and State is a politically correct assault on religion, er, Christianity. (Hey, how about a War on Ramadan, or a War on Passover, or a War on Diwali? Here's an idea: Fox News should abandon its "fair" and "balanced" coverage of the news and become the defender of religious holidays generally. All of them. That'd keep it far too busy to inflict any more partisan damage on the American people. Or is it rather that Fox News cares only about perceived wars on Christianity?)
Good times.
No, not really. It's just that Fox News is at it yet again with more paranoid fearmongering about how secularists are going after major Christian holidays like Easter. Year after year it's the War on Christmas, and then, when that dies down, the War on Easter. I'm curious to know when the War on Lent will begin. Perhaps next year. I intend to bring it up at the next meeting of the Greater Toronto Area chapter of Militant Secularists Against Christianity (MSAC), an international pro-Enlightenment organization to which I belong.
Okay, that's not entirely true. But what is true is the paranoid (and increasingly desperate) fearmongering at Fox News, a manifestation of the self-defining victims-R-us mentality that characterizes so much of the conservative movement.
Bill O'Reilly is sure to join the folk-flaunting fearmongering soon enough, but for now the chief fearmongerer is asshole extraordinaire John Gibson, the Fox host who played up the Obama-went-to-a-madrassa-and-may-be-a-terrorist non-story that had the right-wing bobbleheads drooling a while back. As Think Progress is reporting -- and, as usual, it has the video to back it up -- Gibson has been making a big deal out of certain (five-year-old) goings-on in Walnut Creek, California, where the Easter Bunny has been rebranded as the Spring Bunny.
Ooh. Aah. Will Christianity survive?
Gibson apparently has little faith that it will. "The question is why does the word Easter have to be expunged? Is this political correctness gone too far?"
I don't feel like getting into the whole Church-and-State thing here, but it seems, if I am to follow whatever fuzzy logic there may be here, that any attempt to divide Church and State is a politically correct assault on religion, er, Christianity. (Hey, how about a War on Ramadan, or a War on Passover, or a War on Diwali? Here's an idea: Fox News should abandon its "fair" and "balanced" coverage of the news and become the defender of religious holidays generally. All of them. That'd keep it far too busy to inflict any more partisan damage on the American people. Or is it rather that Fox News cares only about perceived wars on Christianity?)
Good times.
Labels: Christianity, Fox News
posted by Michael J.W. Stickings at
12:57 AM
11 Comments:
Well that's exactly the case - all their pretend defenses are attacks on the beliefs of non-evangelists. I find it amusing to propose an almighty god who needs none the less to be defended by us lesser beings.
But they've picked a funny tradition to defend. The similarity between the word Easter and Ishtar isn't accidental and the holiday dates nearly back to the dawn of civilization if not quite to the dawn of rabbits.
A meatless lent, hot cross buns, rabbits, eggs and the whole shebang come straight from ancient mesopotamia and have to do with the ressurection of Tammuz, the son of Ishtar the Queen of Heaven and the sun God.
But it isn't any kind of theology the Fox folk are defending, it's the tribe of believers. They simply use American Christianity to crreate an "us" so they can prosper by selling Us against Them arguments.
By
Capt. Fogg, at 9:19 AM
Oh. WoE.
I know Jesus is often refered to as the Lamb of God. Did I miss the part where he became the Bunny of God?
Mr. Gibbon should be forced to explain what the devil langomorphs have to do with Christianity in the first place.
I'm not a biblical scholar but unlike a lot of radical christians I've actually read the thing. I don't recall any mentions of the critters, except for a bit in the OT about dietary laws.
tAiO
p.s. We look forward to you standing in at CBR.
By
Anonymous, at 9:45 AM
I have to share: God is Imaginary get over it. since when is the separation of church and state heresy?!?
By
Anonymous, at 4:23 PM
Frankly, I think they're missing a bet if they don't expand this tactic from religion to patriotism. Why not decry the War on the Fourth of July? Or the War on Memorial Day? Clearly liberals hate America so they must be dissing it most on its most greatest holidays. If they were careful, they could stretch this out so it would last all year, one War after the next.
I think it's a rating bonanza. At least, it will be until the backlash comes....
By
Mick, at 4:57 PM
Well, Some christians don't want Easter related to the Spring Fertility (Pagan) holiday that is represented by Rabbits and eggs.
Easter was linked over this holiday the same way that the birth of Christ was moved back to winter to encompassed another non-christian religion's holiday.
Those christers are some busy little beavers, working overtime selling their mythology for the past 2000 years.
By
Faded, at 12:57 PM
The "Spring Bunny," front-line soldier in the War on Easter.
As if those newborn rabbits and all the colored eggs that they somehow laid in baskets are so central to the myth of resurrection that sustains Christianity and its Passover substitute.
By
avishalom, at 2:28 PM
Fade has the right idea about the connection of Christmas and Easter to pagan celebrations. However, unlike the commemoration of his birth, the commemoration of the crucifixion (and "resurrection") of Jesus of Nazareth is at least timed to a pre-existing monotheistic festival at which the event occurred. The "Last Supper," after all, was a Pesach meal & seder.
By
avishalom, at 2:32 PM
The similarity between the word Easter and Ishtar isn't accidental ...
Actually, it is acccidental. This link was completely contrived by neo-pagans. There is ZERO evidence - linguistic, historic or archaeological - linking Easter to the Goddess Ishtar.
The Venerable Bede claimed that Easter was derived from the Germanic goddess Eostre and that name is possibly linked linguistically to the Greek goddess of the dawn Eos (not the Greek version of Ishtar, Aphrodite). But, there is no corroborating evidence to back Bede up.
Fact is, we don't really know where the English and German names (Easter/Ostra) for Passover reaally came from. Everybody else (except some Slavs who use the German) on Earth uses a variant of the Hebrew Pasach for the holiday.
By
Anonymous, at 2:39 PM
I believe that the name "Militant Secularists Against Christianity (MSAC)" may well be picked up by some right winger somewhere who will promptly sell it as an actual terrorist organization.
The right is so dirty and immoral that this satirical name for a nonexistent organization will be turned into some bizarre cause to rally against by the lying right wing noise machine.
By
Beonda Pale, at 4:33 PM
There is a "War on Halloween" every year.
By
Pepper, at 4:53 PM
Bummer, Easter is one my favorite, all flavor holidays. It's got Jesus, bunnies, chocolate, and of course eggs. It's the pagan fertility rites, with attitude.
"You see those bunnies hoppin' and Christ is risin' there too..."
(To the tune of 'Sleigh Ride').
By
Anonymous, at 6:57 PM
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