The bunny is an idol. There, I've said it. The patron hare of sweet-to-eat has usurped the highest holy day on the Christian calendar and demoted its billion-plus practitioners to mere subsidiaries of M&M Mars, Inc. While some Christians still cling desperately to ideals and advance feeble apologetics ("The egg is a symbol of new life; it's how chickens are born again!"), I think even the theologically comatose will agree that there exists a chasm of vacuity between "Son of the Living God is raised victorious over the forces of evil and death, in the process saving mankind from the certain damnation of his sinful nature" and "anthropoid lagomorph traipses gaily about leaving candy and pastel eggs in difficult-to-reach places."
Why has the bunny triumphed? Put simply, he's easier. Like a drunken partygoer looking for someone "just to walk her home," the bunny requires only a minimal investment of your time and effort before you can go on with your life having gotten what you wanted. Specifically, this is the time and effort it takes you to go to the store and buy some Harry-Potter-flavored jelly beans, layer a few baskets with fake plastic grass and then contend with sugared up rug rat for a week. Not totally effortless, I'll admit, but compare it to what Jesus Christ asks of us, to take up our cross and follow him, die and be reborn, face persecution in his name and a litany of other unpleasantries, and it becomes clear why so many people end up saying, "Let's just tell them a magical rabbit stopped by." Children raised on this interpretation of Christianity grow up to be the type of wonderful people who will wish you a "Happy Good Friday" without the slightest consciousness of irony or inanity. It is difficult to pinpoint just who, besides of course Satan, is responsible for the generations of religiously ignorant children bred by the insidious Bunny Culture.
In any case, none of the possible root causes is particularly important because, as I mentioned above, the bunny has triumphed. While the Christian in me laments the secularization of my Lord's resurrection, far more joyful is my inner comical cynic, who has of course already realized the inevitable: With the fall of Easter comes open season on the holy days of other faiths. Of course, all that this entails is finding meaningfully unrelated secular acts by which to undermine solemn religious ceremonies.
Like many of my good ideas, this first one came to me while I was on the toilet. I think an appropriate way to celebrate the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan in a modern (read: secular) way is to wear a silly hat for its duration. One wouldn't actually have to fast, of course, only wear the hat. If questioned, the appropriate response would be to say, "This is my Ramadan Hat. But I don't expect you to understand my ethnicity." The benefits to this are twofold. First, if you are white, as I am, you are raising awareness of, with the distinct possibility of entering into a dialogue about, whiteness as an ethnicity. I hear that is "in" nowadays. Second, I don't think that any among us can deny that it is a rare situation indeed that is not drastically improved simply by the wearing of a Ramadan hat, especially a silly one, by those involved.
Possible drawbacks to this endeavor include the fact that as of this writing I do not know precisely when Ramadan falls. This would bring a fair degree of difficulty to the decision of when to wear a Ramadan hat. Moreover, because the decision of what particular silly hat to wear is left to individual interpretation, one can't rule out the possibility of a celebrant donning a yarmulke as Ramadan hat. While the Jewish headgear might qualify as a "silly hat" (I am entitled to make this judgment because I am a Roman Catholic and therefore know something about silly hats), the co-option of it as a symbol of Ramadan, though admittedly an officially secular one, might unintentionally inflame latent embers of disdain between Muslims and Jews. And stirring up centuries old religious hatred is an indecency with which I simply refuse to become involve.
Plus, any hat that gets worn for a full month is liable to become somewhat grimy without dutiful laundering.
