What's With That?

I was walking to the store with Ethan (age 6) on Friday and we were talking about Easter and Good Friday, et al. Ethan said, "I know about Jesus dying on Good Friday and raising from the dead on Easter. But why is there have eggs, candy and the bunny. What's with that? I don't get it.

So, I told him about how the Church, after a few centuries, had strayed from it's Jewish roots and no longer celebrated the Jewish Festivals. The Church was made the official religion of the Roman world and adopted the times for the festivals of the culture. For instance, Easter was to be held on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox, the traditional time of the celebration for the Goddess of fertility.

I further explained how our culture is obsesses with creating experiences for our children that require parents to buy some ridiculous plastic artifacts to assuage the guilt they feel for not being the parents they think they should be. The mentality being, if I buy them all this stuff, maybe they won't notice that I am a sucky parent. Maybe if I buy them this stuff, I am not a sucky parent, even though I rarely spend time with them. At least the times we do have together are "quality".

I went on to explain that our culture seems to be making a concerted effort to replace any of the spiritual significance of our religious holidays with a drive for material gain.......

Ok, not really. I just said, "Yeah, what's with that?"