Have they considered renaming it? You know, to something that doesn’t have a pagan goddess in it? I mean, if you want to put the Christ back in the resurrection holiday, possibly you should call it something with Christ in it and maybe even knock it off with the fucking bunnies and eggs already.

Is it me, or are right-wingers essentially all just saying “No fair, we started it!” in response to every dust-up now?

I went to a lovely Ostara ceremony last Thurs. night w/a friend who’s Wiccan. No blood, suffering or crosses, just plenty of flowers, bunnies, egg painting, incense, &, oh yeah, vernal equinoxian renewal prayers to the beings from north, south, east, & west.

Switch the 5 yr. olds over to neopaganism. Less guilt, less gore, more fun.

dsidhe: “call it something with Christ in it and maybe even knock it off with the fucking bunnies and eggs already.”

I guess when the core message of your cult involves torture and death you’re a wee bit fucked in the PR department — hence, the fluffy bunnies.

Marketing is working on some alternatives, but focus groups found that playing up the gore at the expense of the bunnies it was a major, major turnoff for the whole brand. Instead, they’re toying with some celebrity endorsements (see “Gibson, Mel”) and some cross-over advertising in public schools (see “initiatives, faith-based” and “education, abstinence-only”).

Oh, Chuy!
These people…..

The more difficult problem is how to remove the gore and essential weirdness of the religion for the youngsters while keeping the cannabalism for those who partake and introducing the gore and death soon enough to scare the crap out of folks enough to make them vote Republican. Quite the challenge.

Reminds me of my next door neighbor’s 5-year-old saying she had “nightmares” because of something I was watching on TV. She happened to be over at the house playing with my nephew while Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey was on, and wandered through the room while Bill and Ted were playing Battleship with the devil in hell. I told her parents, hey, sorry about that, but there was nothing really bad about that movie…no cursing, no sex, no violence…don’t you think it’s kind of twisted to have a 5-year-old afraid of going to hell? Seriously folks, what’s a 5-year-old going to do that would land them in hell, even if it DID exist?

It’s child abuse, pure and simple, to fill a young kid’s head up with such unmitigated bullshit.

My folks were non-observant Christians. My old man hated going to church because he couldn’t smoke. When I was 10 my Mom started to be concerned for my eternal soul and made me go to Sunday School for an entire summer. When regular school started she asked me if I wanted to continue Sunday School.

“Hell, no!” I said. That first Sunday away from Sunday School I turned on the TV and for the first time in my life I laid eyes on…The Oakland Raiders.

Hey, snicker all you want…my guy came back…

“maybe even knock it off with the fucking bunnies and eggs already”

Still more borrowings from pagan fertility celebrations, all part of the church’s effort to win over the northern pagans to the true religion. As with most religions and sausages, it does not do to look too closely at what goes into it. Torture and execution, ritual cannibalism, sexual perversion (celibacy is unquestionably the most unnatural sex act), and the rest. In fairness, the reality of Celtic and Germanic paganism is a bit more grim than generally acknowledged by modern neo-pagans (Goddess bless them), what with well documented human sacrifice and all.

As with most religions and sausages, it does not do to look too closely at what goes into it.

Brilliant. Going to have to borrow that one, Doc.

Going to have to agree with Steyn. I mean, it’s not like the youngsters are going to be exposed to something horrific like Janet Jackson’s breast. And how else are they going to learn that the Jews murdered Jesus? You can never start too young with institutionalized hatred and fear mongering.

And why does Zombie Jesus remind me of John McCain with a beard?

An amusing way to pass the time on the net is to Google how many instances of slain/resurrected gods & heroes there are in ancient religious myth. Slaying & resurrection of Jesus story fits right in there nicely.

is now excessively “disturbing”

well, thanks to Mel and the “Jesus and Mary Chainsaw Massacre” I can see their point

I just have to chime in. Your post made me laugh, and sent me back in time. When I was about 5 or 6, my older sisters were watching Olsen and Johnson’s “Hell’s a Popin’” on TV. There was a scene at the end where they “go to hell” and it scared the sh*t out of me. I went running in to my mother. But I got really freaked out when Porkey fell down a well, or trapped in a cave, or whatever. I mean,I had a hard time with Lassie. Thanks for the flashback!

I used to live in a neighborhood where the local 7 year old friendly kid always wanted to talk to me when he saw me outside. One day he marched up to me and announced that “Rush says that abortion is murder, because if it’s going to be a baby in 9 months then it always was a baby”. I knew the kid was homeschooled, but I didn’t realize until then that Rush was part of his daily classes.

How weird is it that a 7 year old is walking around spouting anti-abortion boilerplate to whomever he can buttonhole? My response was to tell him that there are people, even doctors, who don’t agree with Rush; his eyes got wide and he ran home. I had a nice, peaceful 2 months after that time because his mom apparently told him I was the antichrist and should be shunned. I could garden in peace for a change.

Next up, Jesus goes to the marriage at Cana and turns water into grape-aid.

Hey, they started it with their fetish for rating TV shows, and writing astroturf letters to teh FCC about Janet Jackson’s boobs. Why does it surprise Steyn (someone who thought when the were passing out IQ’S that they were assigning tax brackets and asked for a low one) that the same no one wants to incite the wrath of the letter-writers errrr… astroturfers.

Praise Jeebus! oh, never mind.

I want a church that re-enacts Genesis, especially the part where naked Adam and Eve get to copulate freely (or engage in any other sex act they can imagine), but get into real trouble for eating fruit.

Preschoolers? Nah, not even high-schoolers would have this integrated into their Sunday school curriculum.

I wonder, though, what sort of decorations would Hallmark market for this holiday?

“As we all know, Christmas is that mystical time of year when the ghost of Jesus rises from the grave to feast on the flesh of the living! So we all sing Christmas Carols to lull him back to sleep” – Peter, the family guy