Easter...To Celebrate or No?

I was wandering through Fred Meyers the other day, thinking about what to buy Caelin for Easter. They had some really cute bunny books, chocolate rabbits, marshmallow chicks, candy eggs. Huge, premade baskets could be bought tailored to boy or girl, cars or princesses. Flowers and balloons promised to give my son a special surprise on Easter morning, and cute little outfits begged parents to dress up their adorable babies for their very first Easter egg hunt. All the fun, exciting presents stirred up longing for when I myself was a child, when I would wake up with my brothers and sisters and baskets would be magically placed on the table, waiting for us to gorge on the sweets tucked inside the fake grass and plastic eggs. We would go to church, and a huge Easter egg hunt would ensue at the town park. Afterward, we would all compare prizes, we would count eggs. Who did the best? Who won the most?

As I stared at this plethora of presents demanding that I pay for them in order to make my son happy, I began to wonder....where's Jesus in all of this? What is the real meaning to this holiday, if not our savior?

After all, isn't Jesus why we celebrate on this day? Don't we celebrate Him rising from the dead, triumphing over death so that we might live? Where did Jesus go? We celebrate Easter, and we go to church to hear the good news. But where in Easter is there good news?

Bunny rabbits and Easter eggs and baby chicks are all fertility symbols. Candy is bad for us, and is one of our favorite things to eat on ANY holiday. The term Easter was derived from the Anglo-Saxon 'Eostre,' the name of the goddess of spring. We christians have had a long history with adopted pagan holidays as our own, in an effort to integrate better with this "newer" religion. Christmas is a good example. This difference with Christmas, I think, is some peopel do seem to remember what it is about, and can choose to go secular, pagan, or christian in their celebrations. Not true with Easter. No one seems to remember that this is about God, only that it is about candy.

I have come to what I think is a logical conclusion. I will not celebrate Easter, nor allow my children to. We will take time to remember Christ and his sacrifice, but all the cutsey, stupid traditions that spit in the face of God, we will not participate in. What about you guys? Do you have anything you choose to abstain from, believing it to be unhealthy or detrimental?

John 10:30 "I and my Father are one."