Posted on 03/25/2006 12:19:52 PM PST by WaterDragon
March 25, 2006 -- Here's the opening sentence from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune: ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - A small Easter display was removed from the City Hall lobby on Wednesday out of concern that it would offend non-Christians.
The story went on to explain that a secretary decorates her area, which is apparently near or in the office lobby, for each holiday. This time it was "a cloth Easter bunny, pastel-colored eggs and a sign which said 'Happy Easter.'" This, apparently, enraged the city's human rights director because it negated, damaged or threatened somebody's human rights. This tower of Midwestern cultural nobility, Tyrone Terrill, said that nobody had complained to him about it, and no city money was used to finance the display, so his actions clearly are signs that we are looking at the man's character, here.
Doing the Left thing is the driving force in TT's life, and it is clear that the offense is the kind of thing that can lead to evil in the end. Easter bunnies and pastel eggs, no doubt, infected the poor fellow in Afghanistan who recently went mad and converted to Christ. Are the mullahs who run the City Hall in St. Paul going to be forced to start executing such traitors to stop the flood of converts....[more]
(Excerpt) Read more at oregonmag.com ...
Morons.
The Easter Bunny
The Easter Bunny is not a modern invention. The symbol originated with the pagan festival of Eastre. The goddess, Eastre, was worshipped by the Anglo-Saxons through her earthly symbol, the rabbit.
The Germans brought the symbol of the Easter rabbit to America. It was widely ignored by other Christians until shortly after the Civil War. In fact, Easter itself was not widely celebrated in America until after that time.
The Easter Egg
As with the Easter Bunny and the holiday itself, the Easter Egg predates the Christian holiday of Easter. The exchange of eggs in the springtime is a custom that was centuries old when Easter was first celebrated by Christians. From the earliest times, the egg was a symbol of rebirth in most cultures. Eggs were often wrapped in gold leaf or, if you were a peasant, colored brightly by boiling them with the leaves or petals of certain flowers.
Today, children hunt colored eggs and place them in Easter baskets along with the modern version of real Easter eggs -- those made of plastic or chocolate candy.
Google: Vernal Equinox, Easter Bunny, Easter Egg, thousands of hits ... not hard to find.
Excuse me, but what's Christian about the Easter Bunny? If any thing, it is a remnant of pre-Christian pagan religious symbolism.
Makes perfect sense to me. Everybody knows the Easter Bunny died for our sins and is venerated by Christians around the world. /sarc
Liberals are insane.
You don't want to confuse liberals with the facts when they are on a roll.
Regardless, Lorianne, the liberals attack symbols of Easter in order to attack Christianity itself. That is their target -- Christianity.
They'd better change the name of their city to Paul.
Ahh,
Minnesota! The Ozarks of the north!
I think that has been Bush's strategery all along.......
Let the Dems demogogue themselves to defeat.
Occasionally, however he must punctuate their idiocy.
Last week's 1-2 combination of Laura Ingraham on the Today Show and President Bush's press conference successfully pummelled the MSM into a corner.
Now let's keep that trend on a roll!!
Have you ever seen anybody from Missouri or Arkansas eat fish treated with lye?
Better is 'MinnEsota the Baaston of the Midwest don'tyaknow'
In further notes, St. Paul goes to court to have his name removed from this moronic city.
If I hear the term "offend non-Christians" one more time, I'm gonna puke."
FYI
But Christian -- and pre-Christian -- tradition is rich in animal symbolism that teaches about faith, and this is especially true at Easter.
"But now ask the beasts to teach you and the birds of the air to tell you; or the reptiles on earth to instruct you, and the fish of the sea to inform you" said the author of the Book of Job (12:7-8) around six centuries before Christ.
Animals have long been viewed as examples of God's acts in creation. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, "animals are God's creatures. He surrounds them with his providential care. By their mere existence they bless him and give him glory" (no. 2416). Early Christians understood this, seeing in animals lessons that could teach the virtues of Christian life.
Sometime after the second century, a Christian in Alexandria, Egypt, wrote The Physiologus (The Naturalist). This book had stories about four dozen animals, ranging from lions to unicorns, used as allegories for moral Christian living. This book expanded over the centuries to include over 150 animals, and was quoted by such theologians as Augustine and Aquinas.
By the 12th century, a new book evolved from The Physiologus called The Bestiary. It became one of the most popular teaching and preaching texts for the next several centuries. Fantastically illustrated, the book was read across Europe and copied in many forms. The Getty Museum says bestiaries contained "Characteristics particular to each animal (which) were overlaid with Christian significance so that the stories in the bestiary functioned as moral lessons."
The images became so popular that they adorned churches around the world. But why were animal images so popular? Sharon Coolidge, classical literature professor at Wheaton College, says that "by studying the behavior of animals, man could see his own human qualities and motives, and he could use these moral lessons to help effect his own journey back to God."
As we near Easter, it might be helpful to study various animal legends surrounding Holy Week to see how animals have helped Christians on their Lenten journeys back to God.
--Even rabbit tails carry messages for Easter, By Patricia Kasten
a cloth Easter bunny, pastel-colored eggs
Precisely.
Shall we file suit?
The Bunny Trail of Christianity runs deep with the melted chocolate of the Peeps-first martyrs. St. Peter the Cottontail warned us of this.
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