All right now, get mad at them eggs!
A blogger who had abandoned them because of ineffectiveness with regard to outreach asked the following:"What do you think about Easter egg hunts at church? Do you see it as a helpful outreach tool? Are you concerned about detracting from the real meaning of Easter?"
Oddly enough, I stopped participating in "Easter activities" after I became a Christian. As a non-church going family we celebrated with eggs, rabbits, candy, and baskets. If there was any connection made to Jesus' resurrection, I never noticed.
After becoming a Christian in college I was like, "Hey, Jesus rose from the dead. So that's what this is all about?" Then I wondered, "Why all this other distracting stuff?"
Research revealed paganism fertility goddess worship behind the imagery. I don't even call it "Easter," but "Resurrection Sunday."
The short answer for me is that I'm opposed on theological grounds, but even if I wasn't I'd have a problem similar to what I have with Christmas.
I'm not anti-Santa, but I hate that Christ is eclipsed at Christmas because of Santa and Rudolph, etc.
Plus, I also don't think those outreach efforts yield much fruit and resources could be better spent.
So, seemingly in the minority I'm opposed to the Eggstravaganzas on those 3 levels.
"All the Easter eggs and the Easter bunny are even more extraneous to the purpose of Easter than Santa is to Christmas. At least Santa Claus was based on a saint. I wonder whether even some Christian churches are making the connection between Christ's death and resurrection and victory over sin — the linchpin doctrine of Christianity."Regardless of your particular practice, I encourage you to prioritize the resurrection in your celebratory festivities. Like Christmas, Jesus is the reason for the season.P.S. Incidentally, doesn't anyone else find the Easter bunny rather creepy?
- Al Mohler, President of SBTS
Labels: holidays
posted by GUNNY @ 11:58
19 comments
19 Comments:
I'm with you. Let's stick to what should be our priority, Christ's resurrection. Cluttering the holiday with extraneous elements is a distraction from a message that the world needs to hear.
Easter Egg hunts might not yield much fruit but giving away cars and TVs surely will!
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20100402/texas-megachurch-to-give-out-cars-tvs-at-easter-services/index.html
Well, now you're talking enticements!
Wow, not even in our league.
We attended an Egg-stravaganza on Thursday that drew a lot of families and a lot of children. There was a performance by Ross King, a friend of mine who has just produced a kids' album that's really good (rosskingmusic.com).
Was it perfect? Did it get decisions for Christ? I don't know. I'm sure there are some better ideas out there. But I'm a little fatigued with the Christian purist anti-cultural holiday thing too.T here's too much complaining and too little in the way of alternative ideas offered. My 2 cents.
And Gunny for President in '12!
Oh, c'mon. We plundered the Egyptians... er... pagans long, long ago. We stole their holidays and subverted their symbols, subjecting them all to Christ. Bunnies and egg hunts and all don't mean fertility rituals anymore! When people hear the word "Easter" now, they don't think of pagan goddesses -- they think of Jesus Christ and Resurrection. There haven't been pagans worshipping Eostre in over a thousand years. They're dead, and we're not! Bunnies and egg hunts and Christmas trees and Halloween candy are all Christian things now! They're like those little gold statues of Amon-Ra that the Israelites beat into candlesticks for the Tabernacle. Don't give them back to the dead pagans! It seems like only Christians associate "Easter" with paganism anymore.
Or, at the very least, if you won't take advantage of the plunder our ancestors won, at least try to replace it with something that demonstrates that we Christians know how to celebrate better than pagans. After all, we're the ones with something to celebrate in the first place!
HE IS RISEN!
Just out of curiousity- is the word Easter itself offensive? What about the days of the week since they all refer to pagan gods? Freida, Wooden, Thor etc. Should Christians refrain from calling Wednesday Wednesday since it really means Wooden's day?
I like the idea of Christians celebrating better than everyone else. Seems like we have the most to celebrate.
I'm not real clear on what exactly is wrong with easter egg hunts? I guess if a church decides not to do one, whatever, but if they decide to have one as a way of inviting non church goers, I don't see the big deal unless of course easter egg hunting is a sin. I can't see a church inviting people to come sin.
I also guess if the purpose of your easter egg hunt is to increase the number of pew fillers come Sunday, I imagine that misses the mark.
I'm not worried about Easter being pagan. I'm more concerned with the distraction from the true meaning of Easter.
I'm not a big fan of using Easter Egg Hunts as an outreach but the church I attend does do it. They do a Fall carnival at Halloween as well. I don't really enjoy either one and I'm glad my children our outgrowing them.
Yes, Easter has a pagan origin.
Yes, the early Christians transformed the holiday to commemorate Christ's resurrection.
Yes, both are man-made holidays.
Yes, we therefore have liberty in the way we celebrate/don't celebrate this day.
Praise the Lord! (and pass the eggnog, come December).
Curiously enough, it may be the case that "Easter" isn't a pagan name after all.
I always appreciate the comments, even when the writer thinks I'm a moron.
I don't like to Bogart the mic in the comments section, but after about a week I thought I'd weigh in, particularly where questions were raised.
As to the term "Easter" I'm not a fan. That is an interesting bit Ron uncovered to at least raise question about the ascribed Pagan reference to the name inherent in the holiday's more popular moniker.
Nobody asks me, but if I had my druthers we'd all call it Resurrection Sunday and we'd celebrate it after Passover each year. I like Resurrection Sunday, because it explains the gist of it.
Again, as a non-Christian I celebrated Easter with all the accoutrement, but with no knowledge of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Personally, I don't want that for my children. That's not to say that "Easter" or eggs or bunnies necessitate that, mind you. But, I don't see how it aids in the process of catechizing my children about the resurrection of the Lord either.
I'll be the first to say that I wish Christians could come up with our own fun slooge that has reinforcing relevance for our holidays.
At best we often appear to have a lame imitation that pales in comparison to the world's stuff. For example, our Halloween alternatives remind me of the kids trying to convince me to listen to Stryper instead of AC/DC or Van Halen.
We do give our children Resurrection Sunday gifts, akin to the gifts given in celebration of the Lord's birth. So, at least we're not Scrooging our kids as badly as we could.
Oh, and if I had my druthers we'd call it Incarnation Sunday in December, celebrating it the last Sunday in December. I know many skipped church a few years back when Christmas fell on a Sunday, but I actually quite liked it.
The December 25th thing is a bit silly in retrospect and so let's set it on a day/date that works better for our schedules. Perhaps the last Friday in December, so we could try to score a 4 day weekend, similar to Thanksgiving?
Ron wrote: "Or, at the very least, if you won't take advantage of the plunder our ancestors won, at least try to replace it with something that demonstrates that we Christians know how to celebrate better than pagans. After all, we're the ones with something to celebrate in the first place!"
I do feel ya, Ron, and wish that over 2,000 years we could have come up with something that is more of a teaching tool to help our children better understand that which is important to the church.
I'm no idea man, but I do contend that many of things we've try to commandeer are actually more distracting than not.
In response to the 2nd Anonymous ... you probably won't check back and clearly won't get your email notification of comments added, but still you raise valid questions.
1. If Easter is/was a pagan goddess name, then I would think that one's pretty obvious. As an analogy, I would think most would oppose the Baal Bunny, even though the word Baal is more easily used, since it means Lord. I wouldn't like the Allah Antelope or the Raa Ram at Christmas time.
Perhaps I'm overly sensitive, but preaching through Judges and once again seeing the syncretism of God's people in light of a jealous God, I'd rather err on the side of being thought a weirdo.
2. If the eggs and the bunnies were used to pay homage to the goddess of fertility, then re-enacting those events seem contrary to a holy day set aside to honor the risen Lord.
I'll admit Ron's got a point that most don't know the origins. So, they clearly don't intentionally worship a pagan goddess or anything like that. I wouldn't say that they are.
I will say I am glad nobody threw out the tired comparison to meat sacrificed to idols. That comparison always breaks down because the true parallel would be buying eggs on Monday that had been decorated the day before or scoring cheap candy on November 1st. Paul never said God's people should participate in the sacrificing of meat to idols.
Now, I also have to approach this subject differently as a pastor/elder than I do as a dude. I also have different levels of conviction about what people do in their own backyards versus that which the church sanctions, promotes, and conveys to its people and the world regarding the essence of Christianity.
I know emotions can run high in these discussions, but that's probably because matters related to Christ are important.
Lastly, Easter egg hunts to me just seem kind of dumb. At least I can understand the appeal of dressing up (e.g., Halloween). I can understand wanting a big bag of candy whilst dressed as Dracula. I got that as a kid and I still understand the appeal.
What I find funny, however, is the world thinking Christianity is eggs, the Easter Bunny, and Rudolph. Put those on your wall in the public school classroom and you're in violation for celebrating the religion of Christianity.
I just wish we had better symbols to represent and better stories and better ways to celebrate.
What might that look like? I got nothing, which is why many will think I'm an idiot for not at least getting on board the co-opted pagan slooge.
P.S. While I'm showing my inner-Scrooge, many at my previous church didn't like me because we didn't parade the flag down the aisle or salute it or sing songs celebrating the USofA on the 4th of July, etc.
But, and this gets back to the lack of awareness of what they're doing, I still get tickled when people in the south sing the Battle Hymn of the Republic, a song whereby the north asks God to stomp the grapes of wrath on those wretched evildoers in the south.
It's almost as fun as seeing longhorns sway back & forth singing, "Saw Varsity's horns off" while the Aggie Band plays the Aggie War Hymn, the school fight song specifically naming UT as the evildoers.
Hey, thanks all, for the comments.
Gun sez: I do feel ya, Ron, and wish that over 2,000 years we could have come up with something that is more of a teaching tool to help our children better understand that which is important to the church.
Well, actually, we kinda did. Traditions which might have had pagan origins may have been floating around, but the emphasis was still on the church's own celebrations. But when those celebrations are taken away, that leaves only the pagan traditions. Unfortunately, the more "hardcore" elements of the Reformation (from whom the Baptists take much of their heritage) basically threw it all out. The English Puritans and Separatists abolished the observation of all Christian holidays, including Christmas and Easter. American Puritans were little better. This is what I mean by Christians giving the holidays back to the pagans.
Holy Week at a liturgical church can be profound, rich with symbolism, imagery, and storytelling. Somewhere along the line, the rest of us decided that wasn't "biblical" and did away with it. But human beings are storytelling creatures and will have their ritual, symbolism, and imagery one way or t'other. Now we have those "lame imitations" you mention, only worse. Easter used to be the centerpiece of the church year, but now it's practically an afterthought. This year at our church the "Fall Festival" was a bigger event than Easter was. Christmas gets a bigger boost typically, but it is far, far more pagan in its origins than Easter is.
There really isn't a need to invent new celebrations out of whole cloth when we've got close to two thousand years of material to draw from.
I let my kids hunt and dye eggs because it's fun and they enjoy it. Amazingly enough, it doesn't get in the way of their learning about Jesus, either. Now, I'd love to take them to Holy Week services and let them see the re-enactment of the Last Supper, the foot washing, the stripping of the altar, the darkness of the vigil, the burst of light when Death is reversed, the bells, the gold, the green... But, well, we're Baptists. ;-)
Oh, one more thing. Gun also sez: I also have different levels of conviction about what people do in their own backyards versus that which the church sanctions, promotes, and conveys to its people and the world regarding the essence of Christianity.
Given that people are the church, I don't think you can separate what people do in their backyards from what the church sanctions, promotes, and conveys. These should be the same thing, really. Doug Wilson is fond of saying that your theology comes out your fingertips, and what comes out your fingertips is generally your theology. If there's a disconnect between the two, it's worth taking a long hard look at.
Ouch. Sorry to blog-hog like that.
In response to the 2nd Anonymous ... you probably won't check back and clearly won't get your email notification of comments added, but still you raise valid questions.
I guess you figured only anonymous 1 would check back since they agree with you, but actually I'd been checking back regularly.
I will add, it seems a little late in the game to change the name of a holiday since then it becomes another language barrier between Christian and non Christians. I fail to see the benefit just as I fail to see Christians all changing the names of the days of the week.
I will also add very few people use every instant in life to catechize their child, so the fact that Easter eggs may or may not do that doesn't make your point.
Ron-appreciate the link.
Anonymous 2 ... no need to get tender. Your disagreement had nothing to do with my anticipation or expectation. I didn't expect Anonymous 1 to check back either, but I'm glad to hear that you did.
I actually think calling it "Easter" is more of a language barrier between Christians and non-Christians. Labeling it something like "Resurrection Sunday" is more explanatory to the outsider with regard to what it is we're actually celebrating.
I would contend that's much less "Christianese" than "Easter" is and requires no translation or interpretation for the common (wo)man.
"I will also add very few people use every instant in life to catechize their child, so the fact that Easter eggs may or may not do that doesn't make your point."
I concur with the first point, but I think you've missed my contention on the second. I'm not so much against Easter eggs because they aren't adding anything positive educationally, though I think that's true. Not only don't they add anything, I actually think they detract from the significance of the holiday.
In other words, they are communication "noise" drawing attention away from the significance of Christ's resurrection, even if they were devoid of pagan imagery or symbolism (which I don't think they are, mind you).
I don't think everything need teach or communicate truth to be employed, but it certainly helps and the distracting aspects hinder.
I guess this brings us back full circle to Anonymous 1's comments. Anon1, if you're there, thanks for weighing in also.
Oh, my bad, Anon2, I forgot to address your other comment:
"I also guess if the purpose of your easter egg hunt is to increase the number of pew fillers come Sunday, I imagine that misses the mark."
Sadly, I think that's precisely the purpose in the majority of churches employing the easter egg hunt. Hence, the rationale of some churches to discontinue them when the number of empty seats does not diminish.
P.S. I haven't forgotten your comments, Ron, and you can feel free to "blog hog" up in here.
I think that's now one of my favorite blogosphere terms.
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