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Spring bunny vs. Easter rabbit
Submitted by administrator on Fri, 03/02/2007 - 13:41.
By JIM ZAMORA
Friday, March 02, 2007
It's been nearly five years since Walnut Creek, Calif., renamed its Easter Bunny the "Spring Bunny," but the name change became news this week after a resident wrote a letter to the editor protesting it.
City spokesman Brad Rovanpera said he was surprised by the media buzz and TV news trucks outside City Hall Thursday, attracted by a change instituted in 2003 with no controversy. The city's Spring Bunny reigns over annual "Spring Egg Hunts" in two city parks.
"This will be the fifth year we are doing it that way," Rovanpera said. "This is the first complaint that I have ever heard. In fact, no one has ever complained to the city that we know of. This is from a letter to the editor."
The author of the letter, a former newspaper reporter named Michael Runzler, said banishing the word "Easter" from the bunny and the eggs strikes a nerve with many people. He is happy the story is getting attention, even if belatedly.
"First people can't wish 'Merry Christmas' at a store, and now they've taken Easter away from the Easter Bunny," Runzler said in an interview. "Everyone is welcome to celebrate what they want to celebrate, but if you're offended by an Easter Bunny or an Easter egg, then maybe you should not participate."
Rovanpera said the city renamed the bunny and the egg-hunt events after receiving a complaint from a Jewish resident in 2001 who said she was concerned that the city was sponsoring an event linked to religion.
The debate may echo the so-called "War on Christmas" battles in which a coalition of conservative talk radio hosts and religious groups have tried to prod companies to greet customers with "Merry Christmas" instead of the more generic "Happy Holidays."
Last year there were complaints reported in Minnesota when some malls renamed their bunnies and eggs to delete the term "Easter."
"It's really not a big deal," said Lawrence Cunningham, University of Notre Dame theology professor. "I don't see any intrinsic value to the rabbit to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
"The bunny is a fertility symbol with no religious connection to Easter," added Cunningham who was the Christianity editor for the HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion. "The egg, which was popularized in Greece, Russia and Eastern Europe in connection with Easter, does not have a religious connection to Easter. By taking away the term 'Easter,' these symbols to some extent return to their pre-Christian roots as symbols of spring fertility."
Reach Jim Zamora at jzamora(at)sfchronicle.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com
Depends on what the meaning of is is
It's only words. No attack on Christmas. We just think we'd like to call it something else, and you Christians are really little hypocrites, with your trees and elves and everything, and we're not defending the people who refuse to say Easter, but we really think you Christians ought to just lighten up and let us change the name of all your harmless little silly celebrations, because the important thing is fertility, and rabbits' feet, or something like that. We just like the option of changing the traditional names of things because, it's really, like, a global thing and we don't think its necessary to be discriminating and we are so easily offended that we think it is silly to think that the early colonists were giving thanks to some deity or something; they were actually thanking their newly made Indian friends for their congeniality and it's really not a good idea to call Native Americans red men but it's a good idea to call non- native Americans Black men; brown is not too bad but yellow is definitely a nono.
No, we're not attacking your traditions or values or anything, we're just attacking, and going out of our way to find anybody who will support our attack on, THE WORDS YOU USE because we find words offensive and if we can stir up offense at words, pretty soon we can get us up a good book-burning party.And by the way, bible doesn't really mean anything special; it's just an ancient word for "book", don't ya know?
METHINKS
THOU
PROTESTS
JUST
A
BIT
MUCH
".....in the course of human events....."
And while you're at it, Jim .....
.....could you put a name to the "coalition" you write of? These "religious groups" prodding companies to say things, could you identify them a little more clearly and directly?
There is no media bias, and there is no war on Christmas, let alone Christianity, but there sure as hell is a VAST right wing conspiracy, isn't there, Jim?
".....in the course of human events....."
Spring bunny vs Easter rabbit
I hope Christians all over the world will just remember that poeple have been trying to "disprove" the bible for more than 2,000 years and they have not been successful.......and they won't be successful.
Now they have turned their attack on anything that is even remotely attached (real or unreal) to Christianity. So, just do what you're supposed to do..........pray for the unsaved.
You have got to be kidding me...
And did you know that "Easter" is a pagan god of fertility?
Teutonic dawn goddess of fertility [was] known variously as Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, Eostur, Eastra, Eastur, Austron and Ausos." 1 Her name was derived from the ancient word for spring: "eastre." Similar Goddesses were known by other names in ancient cultures around the Mediterranean, and were celebrated in the springtime. Some were:
Aphrodite from ancient Cyprus
Ashtoreth from ancient Israel
Astarté from ancient Greece
Demeter from Mycenae
Hathor from ancient Egypt
Ishtar from Assyria
Kali, from India
Ostara a Norse Goddess of fertility.
easter roots
It is also not coincidental that the heroine of the Jewish Purim story is named "Esther" - Purim falls at the very beginning of Spring, just before the Christian Easter. There's no escaping our pagan roots, all us Judeo-Christian folk think we've got something new - we need to think again.
explain easter to all of the asses that defile this holliday
Jesus died on the cross on mt. galgetha to attone for all of our sins and arose three days later to ascend to heaven. Untill he returns again on judgement day.
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