Sunday, March 27, 2005
Happy Easter, everyone! Easter is an unusual holiday. Sure, it may be the greatest Christian holiday there is, but the rest of it remains such a mystery. Where did the rabbit come into play? How does a rabbit lay eggs? Candied ones at that.
I can say that after much research, I can easily explain all the nuances of this holiday. To understand Easter you need to start with Friday. Good Friday is the date of the Jesus' crucifixion. Jesus was dead in the grave and something needed to be changed. The disciples were enjoying this newly founded religion. They had found that liked to sleep in on Saturdays, they could hang out with all the "cool people" (prostitutes, tax collectors, black people), and no one would call them unclean, and this is the big one, they had discovered bar-b-cue. You have no idea how hard it is to find a good kosher brisket.
What they needed was a new mascot. Therefore they settled on their favorite animal, the rabbit. After all, the rabbit exemplified everything for which they were fighting. The rabbit was gentle. The rabbit was very fruitful and multiplied. Their church needed growth if it was to sustain itself. The rabbit was delicious and easy to catch, and they didn't want to quit eating it. (Leviticus 11:6)
Lo and behold, the disciples showed their foolishness, when who should arrive but the God/man himself, Jesus Christ. Well, the disciples had three days worth of back-pedaling to do. Somehow, the rabbit tradition never seemed to leave Easter. It was always a joke at the disciples expense that Easter Bunny was going to come on Easter. In defense, I must say that humor was a lot easier to achieve in those days. After a good day of Gregorian chants, simply passing gas in front of the fire was pretty funny.
Then came the discovery of cocoa and America. Eventually cocoa made its way to Europe when Johann Gregors of Austria realized that he could make little chocolate balls just like rabbit droppings. He marketed them in his shop on Good Friday 1598. There always seemed to be extra shelf space, since his Jew-Jew Beans seemed to stop selling so well at Passover. Of course, his business seemed to drop off considerably. It seems that everyone thought that he had an infestation problem. It appeared that his shop was full of rabbit droppings.
In 1599, he had the great idea of coating them in candy. No one would mind eating the poop as long as they didn't have to see it. That and the fact that you could still get a good laugh by "giving poop" to your friends made it an instant success. It was still technically there on the inside, so it was still technically funny. (See earlier mention of Gregorian chants.) Also, the idea of multi-colored poop was funny as well.
Unfortunately, some schmuck in Pennsylvania copied the idea some centuries later and marketed the heck out of it. That is why we never think of the poop aspect of it anymore.
Of course, another schmuck, Pope Pious VII, also noticed that Johann's candies were like little eggs. Eggs which were like the rebirth of Christ on Easter. (Of course, he wasn't very smart. Very few eggs have a gestation period of three days. Unless you count insect eggs, and no Christian wants to be associated with kind of pestilence.) So therefore, we also lost the joke of the PR campaign gone poorly and the true meaning of the Easter Bunny.
So there you are. The true story of Easter symbolism has now been revealed to you. Of course, the disciples didn't live forever. So somewhere, we started to go to church on Sundays, because we wanted to avoid all those slow Saturday drivers, and because of some damn early risers, we decided that we should start having services earlier and earlier. Eventually, we backed it all the way up to midnight cutting into serious drinking time from Saturday night with the "cool people." That's when the church lost all its early vision and decided that only hillbilly rubes would eat animals like rabbit.
I can say that after much research, I can easily explain all the nuances of this holiday. To understand Easter you need to start with Friday. Good Friday is the date of the Jesus' crucifixion. Jesus was dead in the grave and something needed to be changed. The disciples were enjoying this newly founded religion. They had found that liked to sleep in on Saturdays, they could hang out with all the "cool people" (prostitutes, tax collectors, black people), and no one would call them unclean, and this is the big one, they had discovered bar-b-cue. You have no idea how hard it is to find a good kosher brisket.
What they needed was a new mascot. Therefore they settled on their favorite animal, the rabbit. After all, the rabbit exemplified everything for which they were fighting. The rabbit was gentle. The rabbit was very fruitful and multiplied. Their church needed growth if it was to sustain itself. The rabbit was delicious and easy to catch, and they didn't want to quit eating it. (Leviticus 11:6)
Lo and behold, the disciples showed their foolishness, when who should arrive but the God/man himself, Jesus Christ. Well, the disciples had three days worth of back-pedaling to do. Somehow, the rabbit tradition never seemed to leave Easter. It was always a joke at the disciples expense that Easter Bunny was going to come on Easter. In defense, I must say that humor was a lot easier to achieve in those days. After a good day of Gregorian chants, simply passing gas in front of the fire was pretty funny.
Then came the discovery of cocoa and America. Eventually cocoa made its way to Europe when Johann Gregors of Austria realized that he could make little chocolate balls just like rabbit droppings. He marketed them in his shop on Good Friday 1598. There always seemed to be extra shelf space, since his Jew-Jew Beans seemed to stop selling so well at Passover. Of course, his business seemed to drop off considerably. It seems that everyone thought that he had an infestation problem. It appeared that his shop was full of rabbit droppings.
In 1599, he had the great idea of coating them in candy. No one would mind eating the poop as long as they didn't have to see it. That and the fact that you could still get a good laugh by "giving poop" to your friends made it an instant success. It was still technically there on the inside, so it was still technically funny. (See earlier mention of Gregorian chants.) Also, the idea of multi-colored poop was funny as well.
Unfortunately, some schmuck in Pennsylvania copied the idea some centuries later and marketed the heck out of it. That is why we never think of the poop aspect of it anymore.
Of course, another schmuck, Pope Pious VII, also noticed that Johann's candies were like little eggs. Eggs which were like the rebirth of Christ on Easter. (Of course, he wasn't very smart. Very few eggs have a gestation period of three days. Unless you count insect eggs, and no Christian wants to be associated with kind of pestilence.) So therefore, we also lost the joke of the PR campaign gone poorly and the true meaning of the Easter Bunny.
So there you are. The true story of Easter symbolism has now been revealed to you. Of course, the disciples didn't live forever. So somewhere, we started to go to church on Sundays, because we wanted to avoid all those slow Saturday drivers, and because of some damn early risers, we decided that we should start having services earlier and earlier. Eventually, we backed it all the way up to midnight cutting into serious drinking time from Saturday night with the "cool people." That's when the church lost all its early vision and decided that only hillbilly rubes would eat animals like rabbit.
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