Monday, March 12, 2007

The War on Easter

Yes, you knew it would come. In what may seem like a step forward for political correctness, several retail locations and cities are renaming (or rather, re-renaming) their floppy-eared crowd-pleaser the Spring Bunny or the Big Bunny or the March Hare or whatever in order to appeal to a broader audience and avoid offending people. Of course, they have offended people.

As a Pagan, I am not at all offended by the name of the Easter Bunny. I also could care less about Santa Claus and Christmas, for the record. They're nothing but marketing gimmicks anyway. But it one case it was the Jewish community that complained, which is fine by me. I mean, they don't run around insisting that every candlelabra be labelled a menorah, do they? In this case (which is the same as the other case) a the city agreed with the Jewish community when it was pointed out to them that tacking the name of a religious holiday to a city sponsored event could possibly be construed as a violation of the Constitutional separation of church and state. Apparently this took place five years ago. It took awhile for people to notice, but notice they did.

Anyway, one guy is so het up over this issue, he's actually set up a website devoted to just this issue. It's at http://www.defendtheeasterbunny.com and you should check it out! I mean, if you don't have anything better to do, of course.

As for my family, we'll be enjoying our Equinox Egg Hunt this weekend.