The Bunny Rolled Away the Stone?

    Easter Sunday: Chocolate eggs and bunnies, jelly beans, an Easter Bunny delivering eggs from chickens, gifts nestled in plastic-grass baskets, hunts for eggs, Hallmark cards, a few pastel “Christmas lights” in town…oh, and celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.  How did it come to this?  Did the bunny roll away the stone and leave some Jelly Bellies in the tomb?

    The answer is not as simple as one might hope.  There are so many ideas about where this idea of a magical bunny that hops around leaving eggs in people’s homes that it will probably never be fully understood.  The answer to the question of how it all came to be intertwined with the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus is equally as difficult to pin down, but not so difficult to understand.

      When we consider every religious holiday or celebration, we find a secular element has been introduced.  If a people are not involved in religious activities like attending church, they will find substitutes for those activities with which they are more comfortable.  Instead of attending a Christmas cantata or midnight Christmas Eve service, they will decorate their homes, have their pictures taken with Santa, and give each other presents.  Instead of attending a sunrise service, they will hunt for pretty eggs.

     Commercialism has certainly added to the separation from religiously oriented themes.  Companies can make a lot of money if their greeting cards, sweets and decorations appeal to the large number of people who do not celebrate the religious aspects of holidays once solely religious in nature.  Did a huge number of people have a letter writing or phone campaign to coerce companies into making secular decorations, including orange “Christmas-like” lights for Halloween?  No.  Some marketing folks saw the interest in secularizing the holiday and persuaded the masses they needed these, and a great number of other things, to celebrate without having to even think about the religious significance of the day.

     The public school system must bear some of the blame as well.  Children used to get at least an objective presentation of the meaning behind religious holidays that are a part of our society and culture.  Now they may not be presented with any indication that Christmas (a national holiday in this country) has anything at all to do with God.  The schools are not totally at fault.  Educational content is dictated by school boards that are ultimately controlled by the state and influenced by anti-religious bigots from around the country who pressure the few textbook publishers that exist, and by judges who think they have the right to make laws instead of interpreting them.  Regardless, the result is an extreme lack of education concerning religion and religious history in this country.

      What is the old saying about “when you point a finger at someone there are three more fingers pointing back at you”?  How much of the blame for the secularization of religious holidays must we religious folks bear?  Tomorrow I will attend a sunrise service, a church breakfast and two morning services.  Then I will go home and hide eggs for my grandchildren to find.  At least one church in town is sponsoring an Easter eggs hunt after their service.  Are we encouraging the increased focus on secular aspects of a solely religious celebration?  A more important question: Will my wife understand why I did not get her a chocolate bunny, a Hallmark card or See’s candy? 

The RV, the Cookies and the Words

    Those who have known me for any length of time know that I’m something of a stickler for the English language.  I’m not as irritating about it as some, but certainly more so than others.  I understand there are various ways of speaking and writing to communicate with different audiences.  I admit ignoring many of the squiggly green lines Microsoft Word provides for my grammatical enlightenment because I don’t want my blogs to appear stiff or uppity.  But, there are certain pet peeves that I have great difficulty ignoring when in a conversation with someone or observing signs around town.  I will not use this forum, at least at this time, to rant about the increasing misuse of “less” when “fewer” is meant.  I will not turn this particular post into a tirade on the utter confusion of apostrophe placement or its complete absence.  Perhaps some other time. I would like to address a few other phrases I have observed recently because words matter.

    Yesterday we received a tin of cookies in the mail.  This cute little gift was a nice gesture from the RV store where we spent a considerable amount of our hard-earned cash, stimulating the economy and putting a few bread crumbs on the table of the sales person, the financial clerk, the service manager, the mechanic and the owners.  I was thinking a nice dinner at Cattlemen’s or Black Angus would have been an appropriate gesture of gratefulness, so the cookies were a little bit of a disappointment.  That is, until I read the literature that came with the tin.  That little piece of paper shed a whole new light on that gift.  You see, I hadn’t realized that those cookies were “handmade.”  Think of it.  There were no machines involved in mixing the ingredients together or putting all those bits of batter on the cookie sheets to form the two dozen perfectly identical round shapes!  Somebody used their hands to do the mixing, and then those or another set of hands dropped the mixed dough onto cookie sheets and put them in an oven.  I began to reevaluate the value of this gift.

    Then I noticed that not only were they handmade, they were “fresh” as well!  My first thought had been that these cookies were days old, not “fresh,” meaning right out of the oven.  This revelation made the sincerity of the RV folks in expressing their thankfulness for our business much more meaningful.

    Sarcasm is not easily communicated in writing.  Yet, I suspect each of my readers detected a great deal of it in this post already.  You are very astute!  “Handmade” means “made by hands,” not machines.  I am a little skeptical about this claim.  “Fresh” gets a little more latitude.  It can mean “not stale,” “not preserved,” or “recently produced.”  The cookie makers claim these cookies were shipped the same day they were made, so they do fit at least one of those definitions.  But, they were shipped from Valdosta, Georgia three days before they arrived at our house.  I have a difficult time thinking of a three-day-old cookie as “fresh.”

    Furthermore, according to the box in which the tin arrived and the thank-you note inside, these freshly baked cookies were “Especially Made Just For You!”  If I attribute the normal definitions for these words to this phrase, I must assume somebody at this little bakery had my name in front of them while pouring the flour and seasonings into a bowl for my two dozen cookies.  What a nice thought.  But I am still skeptical.

    Finally, I would like to share with you the “Personal Note of Thanks” from our starving sales person (she told us we were driving such a hard bargain we were taking food off her table).  It is a printed note with her signature on a pre-printed line.  It references the “freshly baked” cookies, how they were “made especially for you” and is lacking a hyphen and a period.  One thing it says is certainly true, “We want to show you a small token of appreciation…”  This they accomplished.

    100 Push-Ups Update: I had to pause at 33.  My bulging muscles are doing fine, but my 60-year-old tendons seem to be rebelling.  All is not lost.  I will continue, but at a slower pace.