A correspondent wrote to express frustration with local efforts to take the “Easter” out of such traditional seasonal vestiges as Easter egg hunts and the Easter Bunny.
He/she pointed out that the Downers Grove Park District added a new program this year, inviting kids to spend Saturday morning, March 27, with the “Spring Bunny,” although the name reportedly wasn’t chosen in an effort to be politically correct. Meanwhile, the Kiwanis Club was holding its annual Easter Egg Hunt at McCollum Park.
For some observers, the attempt to scrub Christian associations from what were originally pagan practices has an ironic symmetry. For them, the post-PC era can’t start soon enough.
Count me among those who not only confess to being members of “faith-based communities,” but also are willing to acknowledge that the traditions of some of those communities — helped along now and then by the marketing geniuses of Madison Avenue — have become deeply woven into our culture.
Why not just accept and embrace that, without bending over backwards to call a Christmas tree a “seasonal conifer” or an Easter basket a “spring basket?” It’s not an insult to those who don’t observe the holidays in question. It’s not a plot to convert anyone to a belief they don’t willingly choose.
The U.S. constitution allows schools to include Christmas carols in their holiday choir performances and park districts to host Easter Egg Hunts in public parks, as long as no one is strong-armed into adopting a certain religious belief or practice.
There’s a big difference between calling a guy in a rabbit suit the Easter Bunny and requiring all participants at such an event to be card-carrying Christians.
It’s okay to acknowledge that religion plays a role here, for at least some of us and has all the way back to the beginning. As long as decisions about what that religion is, and how it is practiced, are left up to the individual.
And on that note, I’ll wish everyone a “Happy Easter.” Or a “Good Spring Break.”
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