Dissing the Holy Bunny of the Resurrection
Some time ago, when the child was a baby, it was Easter, or near Easter, and we went off to the parochial school's Easter brunch and Visit with the Easter Bunny. There were little baskets of eggs and crucifixes (plastic, glitter crucifixes, I think, though maybe that's just my memory being snarky), and there was some guy dressed in a pink bunny suit (the baby LOVED him and stood in line twice to talk to him), and there were pancakes and sausages.
And before we ate the pancakes and sausages, there was, naturally enough, it being a parish affair, a blessing over the food. So we all bowed our heads. And then we got, not a blessing, but a Dreadful Story From Hell, which went so far up my nose you couldn't get it out with the Jaws of Life. For some reason Sam was across the room from me, holding the baby, and he could see me, but he couldn't get to me, and he thought (he knows me pretty well) that I was going to explode and have some sort of horrible fit. But I didn't, I behaved myself, though I probably looked pretty scary, and I mollified myself by knowing that in future I could use the Dreadful Story From Hell as an example, in my medieval lit classes, of how it is that different forms of narrative can get grafted onto each other by methods and means that have nothing to do with the original narratives, really, and that is why we should not jump to assumptions when discussing the realm of faery as it shows up in Gawain and the Green Knight, and start believing that the author of said poem was a pagan. Which he might have been, but probably not.
And the Dreadful Story From Hell, nefariously disguised, at the Easter Breakfast, as a blessing (even I don't have hissy fits in the middle of blessings; that's how they escaped me) went as follows, in essence: One morning the bunny rabbit was hopping cutely around, and he got distracted in his hopping activity by the sight of a big ol' stone being rolled away from the mouth of a tomb (it's at this point I start turning red and steam comes out of my ears, as I See Where This Is Going), and then he was rewarded by the sight of our savior exiting the tomb, and so he was the first of all the woodland creatures to see him rise from the dead, because of which he is given the job of bring Easter chocolates to the little children.
And so that is why we have the Easter Bunny.
AAAAAGH! AAAAAGH! AAAAAGH!
One thing I do admire about this conflated nonsense is the way in which it manages to insult both Paganism and Christianity at one fell swoop; one doesn't often find that in a narrative.
(Imagine my surprise to discover, later, that the story hadn't been made up by my fellow parishioner. Nope. You can buy it.)
Anyway.
All this is by way -- though it's not near Easter, no, no, different time of year -- of telling you that Kay, who thinks of me in odd (really odd) moments, has sent me a link to a really scary CD, which you can buy as well, and which, I guess, you can play ALL next Easter season. (Big Hit: "I'm a Bunny and I Love Easter.")
If you don't invite me over.
And before we ate the pancakes and sausages, there was, naturally enough, it being a parish affair, a blessing over the food. So we all bowed our heads. And then we got, not a blessing, but a Dreadful Story From Hell, which went so far up my nose you couldn't get it out with the Jaws of Life. For some reason Sam was across the room from me, holding the baby, and he could see me, but he couldn't get to me, and he thought (he knows me pretty well) that I was going to explode and have some sort of horrible fit. But I didn't, I behaved myself, though I probably looked pretty scary, and I mollified myself by knowing that in future I could use the Dreadful Story From Hell as an example, in my medieval lit classes, of how it is that different forms of narrative can get grafted onto each other by methods and means that have nothing to do with the original narratives, really, and that is why we should not jump to assumptions when discussing the realm of faery as it shows up in Gawain and the Green Knight, and start believing that the author of said poem was a pagan. Which he might have been, but probably not.
And the Dreadful Story From Hell, nefariously disguised, at the Easter Breakfast, as a blessing (even I don't have hissy fits in the middle of blessings; that's how they escaped me) went as follows, in essence: One morning the bunny rabbit was hopping cutely around, and he got distracted in his hopping activity by the sight of a big ol' stone being rolled away from the mouth of a tomb (it's at this point I start turning red and steam comes out of my ears, as I See Where This Is Going), and then he was rewarded by the sight of our savior exiting the tomb, and so he was the first of all the woodland creatures to see him rise from the dead, because of which he is given the job of bring Easter chocolates to the little children.
And so that is why we have the Easter Bunny.
AAAAAGH! AAAAAGH! AAAAAGH!
One thing I do admire about this conflated nonsense is the way in which it manages to insult both Paganism and Christianity at one fell swoop; one doesn't often find that in a narrative.
(Imagine my surprise to discover, later, that the story hadn't been made up by my fellow parishioner. Nope. You can buy it.)
Anyway.
All this is by way -- though it's not near Easter, no, no, different time of year -- of telling you that Kay, who thinks of me in odd (really odd) moments, has sent me a link to a really scary CD, which you can buy as well, and which, I guess, you can play ALL next Easter season. (Big Hit: "I'm a Bunny and I Love Easter.")
If you don't invite me over.
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