I originally wrote this for my old secular student blog. But, in the great Jesus-y Easter tradition, I will re-tell this post four mutually contradictory times for some reason, and this is number two.
I’m not a big fan of “top 10” lists. Sometimes I want to hear about the average-most items that end up in lists. So here is my list of the 10 most median things about Easter. They aren’t the best or worst things to be said.. in fact they should all fall within one standard deviation of the most average thing that might be said of the holiday.
Also, I want Easter to also be about celebrating Central Limit Theorem.
The bad stuff
10. Human sacrifice is a disgusting, barbaric concept. Doesn’t matter if this one case really happened or not.
9. You probably didn’t need to gain those 5 pounds.
8. One thing the Earth doesn’t need? More fertility. There are 7 billion of us. We can probably stop celebrating our reproductive success now.
7. If you know that you can’t die, then resurrection is a parlor trick, not a meaningful event. It’s like Groundhog Day, but with the alternate ending where almost everyone burns in hell for eternity.
6. Parents lying to their children sometimes leads to said kids developing more skepticism, but it almost always increases mistrust and resentment, which no family needs any of. So be straight with your kids: there is no Easter Jesus.
The good stuff
5. The Cadbury Supremacy hypothesis. This is my own theory that whenever God competes with chocolate, God loses and chocolate wins. This is in spite of Christians having the early advantage of an edible savior. Remember when Halloween was about religion? Yeah, me either. Halloween is about candy, and there wasn’t room for both. Likewise for Christmas. It’s not commercialism my dear wailing “War on Christmas” Christians, it’s the coco. You might as well change the name of Christmas to “Halloween II” right now. For Easter, the cultural chocolate domination is not as total as for Halloween, but it’s just a matter of time.
4. You get to learn who the fair weather Christianity fans are through the magic and idiocy of Facebook. Folks that have logged more hours at Starbucks and the Spearmint Rhino than any chapel will suddenly be digitally devout.
3. Easter necessarily, if subconsciously, connects Catholicism with the innocent amusement of children. Thus, Easter serves as a subtle psychological reminder of the Vatican’s unworldly opinion of child rapists.
2. Eggs are fucking delicious. It’s surprising that we let any of them turn into chickens.
1. Easter is more concerned about celebrating sex than any other holidays. Especially you, Arbor Day. Yeah, I went there. Fuck you, Arbor Day!
Happy Easter, folks.
