The Crucifix vs. the Easter Egg
By: Robert W. Tracinski
Easter's Mixture of the Benevolent and the Horrific Reveals Religion's Antagonism to Human Life
For most Americans, the Easter holiday will pass unanalyzed, its traditions and meaning taken for granted. Most will remember it partly as a pleasant, light-hearted celebration. But they will also remember it as a religious holiday--and they will associate some of Easter's benevolent atmosphere with its religious message. This is a grave error.
The Easter holiday actually presents an enormous contradiction--the grotesque clash of a secular celebration of happiness combined with the religious worship of suffering. It is time to understand the full meaning of this holiday--and to question the message of self-sacrifice it is used to convey.
The most enjoyable part of the Easter holiday is its secular side--the holiday, not of Jesus, but of the Easter Bunny. Families and friends gather together, dressed in their best new clothes, and feast on banquets of roast ham. Excited children participate in treasure hunts, searching for brightly colored eggs and baskets of chocolates. The mood of this secular celebration is one of cheerful benevolence.
But these traditions have no basis in the religious meaning of Easter; in fact, they are a legacy of the pre-Christian era. The very word "Easter" comes from the Anglo-Saxon name for a goddess who personified Spring. It was this pre-Christian holiday that gave us the Easter Bunny (a symbol of fertility) and Easter eggs, whose bright markings represented the colors of the sunrise. The original Easter celebrated the return of warmth, sunlight, and green leaves after a long winter. It was a celebration of the joy of living on earth.
When the first Christian missionaries attempted to convert the pagans, they allowed them to keep this holiday--but they injected into the ceremonies an entirely opposite meaning.
The religious message grafted onto Easter is the story of the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection from the dead. The essence of this story is not the joy of living but the worship of suffering and sacrifice. We are all sinners, according to Christianity, and Jesus chose to suffer the slow, agonizing death of a crucifixion to redeem our sins. Our moral goal, we are told, should be to emulate his example. Thus, the Christian moral hero--the saint--is the person who renounces all personal interests or values.
To concretize the meaning of this message, consider its effect on a boy sitting in church on Easter Sunday morning. The boy may have some possessions that he values--a bicycle, a favorite toy, a book--but Jesus, the sermon tells him, renounced material goods and chose to live in poverty. The child may already know what career he wants to pursue--for example, to go into business and become a high-tech entrepreneur--but Jesus, he is told, dedicated himself, not to his own selfish goals and interests, but to the mission set for him by God, even if that meant to suffer and die. If the boy is old enough to start thinking about girls, he is told that Jesus was pure because he spurned the "sinful" temptation of sex. And if this young man begins to question what he is being taught, he is reminded that Christ, on the eve of his crucifixion, renounced his doubts and placed his life in God's hands.
Christianity teaches man to regard as a sin all of the values that make his life worth living: his possessions, his career, his body, his independent mind. And all the while, hammering this message home, there is the omnipresent figure of Christ on the cross. This is the real symbol of the religious message of Easter: not chocolate bunnies, glazed hams, or Easter eggs--but a man's broken body nailed to a cross, blood flowing from his wounds, tears running down his cheeks, thorns biting into his brow. It is the ultimate symbol of sacrifice.
Most people accept this ideal, not merely as the good, but as synonymous with morality. But is it?
We should question the moral philosophy that tells us to find value in the destruction of the things we value. We should reject the worship of sacrifice in favor of a morality based on the achievement of values. Such a morality would set as its ideal, not death on the cross, but a productive career, a fulfilling romantic relationship, and an independent mind. It would be a morality based on the requirements for success and happiness in this world.
A morality of sacrifice or a morality of achievement, this is the alternative represented during Easter by the opposing symbols of the crucifix and the Easter egg. We must decide which symbol--and which ideal--we choose to live or die by.
By: Robert W. Tracinski
Easter's Mixture of the Benevolent and the Horrific Reveals Religion's Antagonism to Human Life
For most Americans, the Easter holiday will pass unanalyzed, its traditions and meaning taken for granted. Most will remember it partly as a pleasant, light-hearted celebration. But they will also remember it as a religious holiday--and they will associate some of Easter's benevolent atmosphere with its religious message. This is a grave error.
The Easter holiday actually presents an enormous contradiction--the grotesque clash of a secular celebration of happiness combined with the religious worship of suffering. It is time to understand the full meaning of this holiday--and to question the message of self-sacrifice it is used to convey.
The most enjoyable part of the Easter holiday is its secular side--the holiday, not of Jesus, but of the Easter Bunny. Families and friends gather together, dressed in their best new clothes, and feast on banquets of roast ham. Excited children participate in treasure hunts, searching for brightly colored eggs and baskets of chocolates. The mood of this secular celebration is one of cheerful benevolence.
But these traditions have no basis in the religious meaning of Easter; in fact, they are a legacy of the pre-Christian era. The very word "Easter" comes from the Anglo-Saxon name for a goddess who personified Spring. It was this pre-Christian holiday that gave us the Easter Bunny (a symbol of fertility) and Easter eggs, whose bright markings represented the colors of the sunrise. The original Easter celebrated the return of warmth, sunlight, and green leaves after a long winter. It was a celebration of the joy of living on earth.
When the first Christian missionaries attempted to convert the pagans, they allowed them to keep this holiday--but they injected into the ceremonies an entirely opposite meaning.
The religious message grafted onto Easter is the story of the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection from the dead. The essence of this story is not the joy of living but the worship of suffering and sacrifice. We are all sinners, according to Christianity, and Jesus chose to suffer the slow, agonizing death of a crucifixion to redeem our sins. Our moral goal, we are told, should be to emulate his example. Thus, the Christian moral hero--the saint--is the person who renounces all personal interests or values.
To concretize the meaning of this message, consider its effect on a boy sitting in church on Easter Sunday morning. The boy may have some possessions that he values--a bicycle, a favorite toy, a book--but Jesus, the sermon tells him, renounced material goods and chose to live in poverty. The child may already know what career he wants to pursue--for example, to go into business and become a high-tech entrepreneur--but Jesus, he is told, dedicated himself, not to his own selfish goals and interests, but to the mission set for him by God, even if that meant to suffer and die. If the boy is old enough to start thinking about girls, he is told that Jesus was pure because he spurned the "sinful" temptation of sex. And if this young man begins to question what he is being taught, he is reminded that Christ, on the eve of his crucifixion, renounced his doubts and placed his life in God's hands.
Christianity teaches man to regard as a sin all of the values that make his life worth living: his possessions, his career, his body, his independent mind. And all the while, hammering this message home, there is the omnipresent figure of Christ on the cross. This is the real symbol of the religious message of Easter: not chocolate bunnies, glazed hams, or Easter eggs--but a man's broken body nailed to a cross, blood flowing from his wounds, tears running down his cheeks, thorns biting into his brow. It is the ultimate symbol of sacrifice.
Most people accept this ideal, not merely as the good, but as synonymous with morality. But is it?
We should question the moral philosophy that tells us to find value in the destruction of the things we value. We should reject the worship of sacrifice in favor of a morality based on the achievement of values. Such a morality would set as its ideal, not death on the cross, but a productive career, a fulfilling romantic relationship, and an independent mind. It would be a morality based on the requirements for success and happiness in this world.
A morality of sacrifice or a morality of achievement, this is the alternative represented during Easter by the opposing symbols of the crucifix and the Easter egg. We must decide which symbol--and which ideal--we choose to live or die by.