Two musings!
So, I come back with two musings… now that I know how to use WordPress properly. Both of these have to do with my Spring Break, which just started today (no school! Whoo hoo!) So these two musings have come about because of religion. One has to do with my upcoming band trip to Florida, the other has to do with Easter itself.
Musing Numero Uno: Merry Crossmas to all, and to all a good…. Sunday morning?
This article from Slate talks about how Easter has so far resisted the commerialism Christmas has fallen victim to. Christmas and Easter are the most major Christian holidays, of course, so why does Christmas cause so much controversy and have all sorts of capitalistic and commercial baggage tied to it, while Easter doesn’t? They both have been mixed in with Pagan traditions over time– in fact, the reason Christmas and Easter both coincide with Saturnalia and Ostara respectively is because of the Church attempting to win over Pagans. James Martin says it’s because of the stories behind them. According to Martin, the Christmas story is much more palatable to the secular mind than the Easter story. I have to agree myself– what isn’t palatable about a virgin giving birth to a cute little baby boy who grows up to be the Savior? That’s a perfect image for a mid-to-late December greeting card: An infant boy with a little halo lying in a manger, sleeping peacefully, while his virgin mother, the mother’s husband (though not the infant’s actual father… but that’s for another time), the shephards (according to one version of the story), and the Three Kings of Orient (according to another version) looking upon this little baby happily. Add a bit of glitter and it’s perfect. But the Easter story, Martin says, is the antithesis of the Christmas story. The little baby boy lying in the manger has grown up now, and at the age of 33 is suffering the worst punishment the Romans can think of- stripped nearly naked, beaten, humiliated, and nailed to a cross and tortured even more until he dies. Three days later, the man rises from the dead and floats away to heaven. More recently Easter has had more focus on the execution rather than the resurrection. Not a good image for a mid-March-to-early-April greeting card.
With Christmas comes gifts. It’s been a tradition for centuries now, possibly because of the Pagan traditions of Yule and Saturnalia tied in with it. There are also gifts in Christianity. Gifts mean money is spent. And if people are spending money….! That’s why so many corporations advertise like crazy during the Christmas season. Everything about Christmas is happy happy fun fun joy! Nothing upsetting or scary about Christmas (unless you count the stress that comes with buying people gifts, decorating, and then the idiots who think there’s actually a war on Christmas….). But Easter? Quite scary, until you get to the resurrection. Sure, the secular aspects of Easter are cuddly- bunnies, eggs, Peeps- just as cuddly as the secualr aspects of Christmas. The secular aspects are much more marketable than the religious ones, when it coems to Easter. Which is why a lot of fundies whine about how hard it is to find religious items around Easter, because of all of the bunnies and eggs.
But despite Easter being a far more religious holiday than Christmas anymore, Easter is quite easy for me to deal with. Easter isn’t as in-your-face as Christmas is. Sure, you get fundies trying to preach to everyone about Easter, but because Easter is religously pure compared to Christmas, people generally leave it alone and Easter passes quietly, little controversy, little commercialism, just an important date on the calendar.
Musing Numero Dos: This one time, on the band trip…
So I’ll be in Florida next week for a spring break band trip. whoo hoo! But… her friend, Christiane*, isn’t going. She’s going to Guatemala instead. She’s going to be a teenage missionary.
Um, what?
Yes, she’s going to Guatemala to, as the church letter said, “share her faith”. Again… what? Her parents are sending their fiteen year old daughter to Guatemala? To be a missionary? Madness.
What do you have to say about this?
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