Pastel colors and the theft of Easter
As I was walking through Kroger the other day with a friend, I noticed the Easter display up. Surprise; it was weeks early! For some reason, this display bothered me, and I commented to Jamie that for some reason secularized Easter bothered me a lot more than secularized Christmas, even though Christmas is a much bigger deal, at least in this country. At first I theorized that it was perhaps the disgustingly pastel colors that I couldn't handle, not having grown out of my 12-year-old "mustn't look girly" phase. On second thought, though, it seemed to be deeper than that, so here is my analysis of my reasoning:
As I understand it, in the Russian Orthodox tradition, Easter is the pivotal holiday of the Christian year, not Christmas, as it is in this culture. When I first read that, it struck a chord with me as being "right". Doesn't it seem appropriate to be most joyous celebrating Jesus' resurrction - victory over all, even death? Easter should be a profoundly important time for Christians, but it doesn't seem to be that way. Sure, we have our Palm Sunday and various passion week services (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday), then a nice Easter service...and then what? We go color hard-boiled eggs that no one wants to eat and hide them around the yard so that the one we miss will rot and smell bad. What does that have to do with Jesus?
When it all boils down, secular Christmas at least pretends to have some value to it. Things like "sharing" and "giving" and "spending time with family" are lauded, even if the companies really only want you to buy more stuff. With secular Easter, you don't even get pretend values. You get pastel colors, lots of candy, eggs, and a rabbit. It doesn't even really make sense. Secular Christmas has a long history, dating back to the time when people celebrated the winter solstice. Secular Easter, well, as far as I know, it's only an excuse to celebrate consumerism and bad dental hygiene.
Borrowing a point from my husband, I think Halloween (we're leaving out the minority of people who use Halloween to celebrate the occult/satanism here) even beats out secular Easter in my book. While both are blatent purveyors of gluttony and tooth decay, at least Halloween isn't distracting from an important religious holiday. Kids at least can be creative in choosing and even making their own costumes and using their imaginations!
While I don't mind the once a year chance to get my Cadburry egg to eat, I think I'd be ready for consumer America to focus on a different time of year and let me think about the original meaning of Easter for once.
As I was walking through Kroger the other day with a friend, I noticed the Easter display up. Surprise; it was weeks early! For some reason, this display bothered me, and I commented to Jamie that for some reason secularized Easter bothered me a lot more than secularized Christmas, even though Christmas is a much bigger deal, at least in this country. At first I theorized that it was perhaps the disgustingly pastel colors that I couldn't handle, not having grown out of my 12-year-old "mustn't look girly" phase. On second thought, though, it seemed to be deeper than that, so here is my analysis of my reasoning:
As I understand it, in the Russian Orthodox tradition, Easter is the pivotal holiday of the Christian year, not Christmas, as it is in this culture. When I first read that, it struck a chord with me as being "right". Doesn't it seem appropriate to be most joyous celebrating Jesus' resurrction - victory over all, even death? Easter should be a profoundly important time for Christians, but it doesn't seem to be that way. Sure, we have our Palm Sunday and various passion week services (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday), then a nice Easter service...and then what? We go color hard-boiled eggs that no one wants to eat and hide them around the yard so that the one we miss will rot and smell bad. What does that have to do with Jesus?
When it all boils down, secular Christmas at least pretends to have some value to it. Things like "sharing" and "giving" and "spending time with family" are lauded, even if the companies really only want you to buy more stuff. With secular Easter, you don't even get pretend values. You get pastel colors, lots of candy, eggs, and a rabbit. It doesn't even really make sense. Secular Christmas has a long history, dating back to the time when people celebrated the winter solstice. Secular Easter, well, as far as I know, it's only an excuse to celebrate consumerism and bad dental hygiene.
Borrowing a point from my husband, I think Halloween (we're leaving out the minority of people who use Halloween to celebrate the occult/satanism here) even beats out secular Easter in my book. While both are blatent purveyors of gluttony and tooth decay, at least Halloween isn't distracting from an important religious holiday. Kids at least can be creative in choosing and even making their own costumes and using their imaginations!
While I don't mind the once a year chance to get my Cadburry egg to eat, I think I'd be ready for consumer America to focus on a different time of year and let me think about the original meaning of Easter for once.
Labels: culture
posted by mennorose @ 12:45 PM
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