ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 24, 1996 TAG: 9603220025
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: The Back Pew
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
I didn't think it was possible, but it seems that Easter is now chasing Christmas in the "let's see how commercial we can make a religious holiday" contest.
This year, merchandising campaigns for Easter are substantially the same in character as the ones for Christmas.
Ads proclaim the "magical bunny kingdom" at the mall, complete with giant rabbits, giant carrots, giant Easter eggs. Get your picture taken with the Easter bunny, get a free gift.
All for your shopping pleasure.
I shouldn't be surprised, I guess. After all, Christmas is the perfect example of how a holiday becomes at least as secular as it is sacred, and how retailing can outshine religion.
Even our court system has come to view Christmas as largely a secular affair - whose Santas and reindeer and elves and presents can be viewed apart from their religious links.
Actually, I don't object entirely to the commercial aspects of Christmas. At least there's a good reason for the gift-giving, tied as it is to the Christmas story of the Magi and their gifts for the Christ child.
Easter always seemed different, though.
I mean, here is a holy day intimately connected with the story of an execution and burial. The end of the story is about an empty tomb - not exactly the kind of metaphor you'd think would lead to riotous shopping.
True, the holiday culminates in a joyous celebration of resurrected life, but the mood overall is serious and intensely reflective - for believers, that is.
I know, I know. The Easter bunny is a long-held and deeply cherished part of the holiday. So, are the bunny's eggs, as weird as that concept is when you think about it.
We Christians stole them from somebody else's spring festival, lo, those many centuries ago, and there is no inherent conflict with Christianity in their celebration. In their most simple incarnation - an invisible bunny depositing colorful eggs dyed in our own kitchens on the lawn - certainly there is no sense of a commercial takeover about those symbols.
Anyway, the egg hunt - while a family affair - really was aimed at the youngest children, who were unlikely to fully appreciate the theological implications of the day. Where I grew up, older kids and adults were expected to reflect on the more serious aspects of Easter even as we celebrated being united with family and friends.
The other commercial aspect of the holiday was that it was the day when we were likely to show off - while trying to avoid the sin of pride, you understand - a new suit of clothes, a new dress, a new hat, new shoes.
The notion that the holiday was somehow linked to a clothes-buying spree, however, always seemed a little tenuous to me. Spring is a natural time to buy new clothes for growing kids, for instance. Even for adults, spring is a natural time of year to be adding to the wardrobe.
Plenty of non-Christians buy new clothes around Easter time, even if they're not headed for a parade. So I never really thought of that as a corruption of the day's religious significance.
I wonder if I'm just becoming a grump about this. After all, I don't grouse about the secularization of St. Patrick's Day, or the widespread inattention - except in Pentecostal churches - to Whitsunday.
What it comes down to, I guess, is that Easter carries with it a significance that lies in no other Christian holiday. It is, quite literally, the reason there is a religion known as Christianity.
Every major religion has some holy days that adherents work hard to keep above trivialization. Yom Kippur in Judaism and Ramadan in Islam come to mind.
It seems to me that, for Christians, Easter should be too important, too sacred, to be turned into another excuse for an orgy of materialism at the furry feet of a giant pink bunny.
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