Entry 524, on 2007-05-01 at 14:35:20 (Rating 3, Religion)
I was just reading through some "This is True" emails from the last month that I hadn't had time to read yet, and noticed a few concerning Easter. If you don't know, "This is True" is a weekly email which lists bizarre and humorous, but true, news stories form around the world.
The first article described an incident where residents of a small American town complained when the Easter Bunny was renamed the Spring Bunny and there was a hunt for spring eggs instead of Easter eggs. Presumably people felt threatened that the Christian aspect of the holiday had been removed. But Easter was originally a celebration of spring anyway, so what have they really got to complain about? The imagery of the celebration: bunnies, eggs, etc is all about spring, rebirth and fertility and stems from pagan festivals. The Christians just borrowed the day and associated it with their resurrection myth, so now that it has reverted to its original meaning they can hardly complain - but, of course, they will. Never underestimate a Christian's ignorance of his own belief system!
Another story described where a supermarket chain in the UK issued a press release complaining that people would spend a billion dollars at Easter but didn't even know what it symbolised. They then mentioned that the reason for Easter was the birth of Christ. Realising their mistake they issued a correction explaining that the real reason was the rebirth of Christ. Huh? Well, third time lucky, they then issued another revision which gave the reason as the "resurrection", but only after they had consulted with the Church of England!
The reality is, that despite rearguard action by members of the religious right and other groups, religion is on the way out in the western world. Sure, church membership is still growing in some areas, but eventually there won't be any more naive populations left to propagandise and the church will be on its long final spiral into irrelevance.
Its not really surprising that people are ignorant of religious stories today because religion just isn't significant any more to most of them. I guess that the Sacramento newspaper which printed the headline: "Ignorance of the Good Book Reaches Biblical Proportions" was right!
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