In Theory: Does the Easter bunny mask Easter’s message?

To Christians, Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Christ three days after his crucifixion. The apostle Paul emphasized the importance of the event when he wrote in Corinthians, “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.”

To many, Easter is a more important celebration than Christmas, as it commemorates the central tenet of Christianity: that through Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection, he paid the penalty for sin, thus gaining eternal life for all who believe in him.

But for some parents, there’s a worry that the non-Christian symbols of Easter — the bunny rabbits, eggs and candy — could be masking the day’s true significance.

Q: Is there a way of teaching the message of Easter to children without taking the fun out of it?

Of course there is! We seem to do fine with Santa Claus at Christmas, so why not do just as well with the Easter bunny? It is interesting how our traditions develop and evolve. Palm Sunday was this past weekend, and it is so named because some of Jesus’ followers apparently waved “leafy branches” (see Mark 11:8) as he rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey.

So where do we get the idea that people waved palms? I don’t know, because those “leafy branches” came from the fields, according to Mark. It probably doesn’t matter what the people waved, but it is interesting that we celebrate Palm Sunday and not Leafy Branch Sunday.

And what does a fat old man in a red suit have to do with a babe in a manger? Nothing, or everything, depending on your perspective. If Santa Claus represents love and the spirit of giving, then the Easter bunny can represent new life, and lots of it. Again, how our traditions do evolve!

We all believe in the Three Wise Men, but nowhere in the birth accounts does it say the number three. There is mention of gold, frankincense and myrrh, and so we have assumed each wise man brought one gift, but the fact remains that Matthew’s gospel (the only Gospel account containing the Wise Men story) says nothing about the number of Magi.

Switching to Easter, what a strange name for the day of the reason for the season. As I recall, the name may co-opt a pagan goddess by the name of Eostre, who was the goddess of the sunrise and the spring. And we celebrate the Resurrection when? In the spring.

I have no problem with the church’s co-opting of the symbols of other religions, but there are Christians who cannot abide anything, fun or not, that comes from someplace outside the Judeo-Christian tradition. Some believers have a cow (another interesting expression) if their kids dress up in costumes on Halloween because to pretend to be ghosts and goblins is somehow sacrilegious.

In my opinion, people who think that way miss the point of religion, and the point is to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. On those two ideas hang all the law and the prophets, said Jesus (Matthew 22: 37-40).

Happy Easter. And also, happy Passover!

The Rev. Skip Lindeman
La Cañada Congregational Church
La Cañada Flintridge

---

We have always enjoyed fun activities with our children at Easter — egg hunts, Easter baskets and special dinners with our family and friends. But we’ve always made it a priority to communicate the central message of the day: Jesus Christ our lord rose from the grave after having given his life on the cross in the full payment of our sin debt. To help keep our focus on Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday, we’ve always done the egg hunt and baskets the day before. We leave an empty golden plastic egg for each of our children as an object lesson that Jesus’ tomb was found empty. Our Savior lives.

It might serve us well to understand that not everything needs to be about fun, anyway. The joy of knowing Jesus runs much deeper than passing amusement. The depth of his love and forgiveness moves our hearts more profoundly. And for people of all ages, the hope that Jesus’ resurrection gives our lives is sweeter than any chocolate bunny ever could be.

Pastor Jon Barta
Valley Baptist Church
Burbank

---

Yes, it is difficult — once candy has been introduced — to convince children (and some adults) that there is more to look forward to in life than chocolate. The reader will be relieved to note that chocolate and Jesus are not mutually exclusive.

When I visited the Middle East, I was struck by the way humans “layer” their sacred spaces. Churches built on Roman temple ruins. Mosques on Jewish religious sites. Christian pilgrimage sites on ancient pagan springs. The ruins reveal a history of conquerors and competition, to be sure, but it also seems as though there are geographical “thin spaces” (to borrow from Celtic Christianity) where we come in contact with the divine, always seeking to understand, to worship, to transcend.

Easter is a layered religious experience — even the timing reveals that. The resurrection celebration of Easter is on a Sunday because the 4th century church fathers wanted a set-aside Lord’s Day. But of course Easter is “layered” on the Jewish feast of Passover, which begins the night of the first full moon after the spring equinox, which in turn was/is a time of fertility celebration in ancient and current pagan traditions. Ultimately, Easter is a movable feast scheduled for the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

So we Christians celebrate the risen Christ, who becomes, for Christians, the “blood of the lamb” from the Jewish Exodus story. Just like the blood of the lamb saved the Jewish people from death in Egypt and gave them a new chance at life as God’s people, so Christ’s sacrifice saves us and gives us new life. Thus Easter is also a Passover celebration. And it is also a spring celebration of new life.

It’s OK, then, that Easter has eggs and candy, because we tell the Jesus stories, too, and we make a big deal of reenacting the parade of Palm Sunday and the surprised disciples at the open tomb. As kids grow, they’ll take to heart the Good News of Easter as God reveals the layers of meaning to them.

The Rev. Paige Eaves
Crescenta Valley United Methodist Church
Montrose

---

It seems that presenting spiritual principles to a young child is a universal challenge for parents and religious educators. At Unity Church of the Valley, we like to emphasize to the little ones that the resurrection of Jesus means that God’s Life never dies; it means we always have a chance to be a better person, make wiser choices and enjoy new beginnings.

In other words, we can always start over. The bunnies, colored Easter eggs and Easter baskets with toys and candy stand for the idea that life can always be “new” and “wonderful” and that the love of God lives always in our hearts.

We want our children to think of the victory of Jesus Christ over the human experience of death; to think of divine light and life instead of darkness and suffering. It is our desire to let them know that the message of Easter is one of hope and love.

Rev. Jeri Linn
Unity Church of the Valley
La Crescenta

---

First, let me gently correct the assessment of Easter’s central meaning as being about Jesus paying the penalty for sin. That’s only one theory, called ‘substitutionary atonement.’ It comes to us from Anselm in the 11th century, meaning that for the first thousand years of Christianity’s existence, it was not the way we understood the cross. And while the medieval theory lives on in the language of traditional hymns and prayers, it has outlived its persuasive power for many of us. (What kind of nasty God would set up such a system to begin with?)

From the more liberal end of the spectrum, Easter is more simply (and less punitively) about the grace of new life, and the promise of eternal life in God.

It’s a reminder that human life echoes the cycles of nature: birth, growth, decline, a fallow season, then new birth and growth. Spiritually, Easter reminds us that the many losses and deaths of the self we experience while living will, in time, lead to rebirth into a new springtime of life. And it reminds us that in physical death, ‘life is changed, not ended’ (The Book of Common Prayer, based on 1 Corinthians 15:51-52) and our spirits will be embraced by, and dissolved into, the heart of God.

As to teaching the kids about Easter, you could have lots of fun, first explaining that bunny rabbits and eggs are about sex, fertility and birth, then explaining the fine details of all those things, then explaining how Christianity took over pagan spring fertility festivals to be the celebration of new birth and new life in Christ — which is Easter. Wouldn’t that be fun?

Or, you could just give them their candy and take them to church and trust that they, like we adults, are perfectly capable of holding religious and secular meanings side by side. Done; pass the ham!

The Rev. Amy Pringle
St. George’s Episcopal Church
La Cañada Flintridge

---

Celebration of Easter is a practice shared by most Christians.

Some parents seek to teach children important lessons about religious belief and knowledge of the world at this time. This is valuable because we live in a time of change in political, social and technical structures and values. As author Karen Armstrong says, religion is “a practical discipline that teaches us to discover new capacities of the mind and heart.” Many Christians see the life and death of Jesus as teaching about values and fulfillment of human potential.

It seems that the rebirth of spring offers a wonderful lesson in how the world works and can teach us about the wonders we experience. So Easter can serve as a time to teach lessons about values, beliefs and knowledge.

Steven Gibson
South Pasadena Atheist Meetup
Altadena

---

I think it is good to acquaint our children with the entire panoply of spiritual beliefs, back to the nature-based practices of our earliest human ancestors.

It wouldn’t seem to take away from Christian beliefs to also know of the earlier Ostara/Eostre, the Germanic Goddess of the Dawn. Or that a translation mixup involving Oestern (direction of the rising sun) may have given us the word Easter. There is a saying, “the devil got there first,” about sacred days scheduled around the times of pagan celebrations. I say, so what? Humans borrow, recycle or steal outright from earlier times and other cultures.

Why regard the bunnies (ancient fertility symbol worldwide) or the dyed eggs (vernal equinox gifts in ancient Mediterranean lands) as anything other than folk traditions?

Children, and even adults, can understand a special season, including more than one reason for, and more than one way of celebrating, with different “fun” co-existing.

Last Sunday I joined my Montrose Peace Vigil colleagues and more than 100 other diversely spiritual peaceniks at the 10th annual Palm Sunday Peace Parade in Pasadena. With palm fronds — and being April Fool’s, quite a few jester hats and clown wigs — we spent a beautiful spring afternoon celebrating the triumph of life over death by renewing our call for peace everywhere.

Roberta Medford
Atheist
Montrose

---

It’s pointless debating which is better, Christmas or Easter. It’s a chicken-or-egg issue, and you can’t have one without the other. The Christmas event was the savior’s birth and God’s incarnation, but he was born to die, and so Easter recalls the culmination of his ministry with a nice “stay tuned for coming attractions.”

I do tire of the pagan paintbrushers who find fault with every holiday because some element included in its celebration doesn’t have a chapter and verse to validate it for them, but suffice it to say, God is pleased with our celebration of Easter, generally speaking. The Bible says that if we regard a day “as special” (like Easter), we do so to the Lord (Romans 14:6).

No Christian today is celebrating anything pagan, despite the naysayers who try to find pagan origins in the very name “Easter.” I’ve looked into this, and nobody can be definitive as to where the name derived. Suggestions have been Eostre, East-er, Esther, Ishtar or Astarte. Let me borrow a phrase from Shakespeare: “A rose by any other name....”

And Easter is a rose, or better, a lily. We Christians are not celebrating some fertility deity when we celebrate Easter, anymore than we worship the sun because it’s Sunday. God made the bunnies, the eggs, the grass, the colors, the candy (or at least the ingredients) and all of that is to his glory, if we’ll but recognize him in the midst. The Bible says, “whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1Corinthians 10:31). So if someone worries that Jesus’ resurrection is getting buried in peeps and spring hats, I suggest they step back and see God in the midst. Find him in every aspect and glorify him there. Make the sprouting flowers, the emerging butterflies and the Easter eggs about the one who died and came forth once again to new life.

Spring is in the air, life abounds, and the Easter resurrection is about just that. “Taste and see that the lord is good” (Psalm 34:8), even in a chocolate bunny.

The Rev. Bryan Griem
Montrose Community Church
Montrose