EACH spring, as Easter comes rolling around, someone, somewhere will lament the fact that no-one, nowadays, knows its “true” meaning.
Two years ago supermarket chain Somerfield put out a press release saying that:
Brits are set to spend a massive £520 million on Easter eggs this year — but many young people don’t even know what Easter’s all about.
So what IS it all about? Somerfield declared it was to celebrate the “birth” of Jesus.
Whoops! An amended release used the word “rebirth”, but this wasn’t right either so a third had to be issued – this time with the help of the Church of England – saying that Easter was:
A celebration of the resurrection of Christ.
Now, according to this report, we have the Very Rev Adrian Newman, Dean of Rochester, saying that people aged 16 to 24:
The Dean of Rochester
No longer have much of a clue what Easter is about …We must find new ways to bring them to know its meaning.
Without apparently spelling out the “meaning” of Easter, Newman –writing in the March issue of Rochester Link, the Rochester diocesan monthly – says:
As our culture has become distant from our Christian roots, the meaning of Easter has somehow got lost in translation. These days when people encounter the great Christian traditions, it’s like they are stepping into a foreign country where the language and the customs are unfamiliar and odd.
Easter a great CHRISTIAN tradition?
Most visitors to this blog, I suspect, will know that this is bollocks too.
Nevertheless, let us repeat, for the upteenth time, that Easter is a PAGAN festival that became entangled with Christianity because the zombie-worshippers and biscuit-munchers shamelessly nicked it from an earlier culture. It’s all made perfectly clear here.
Newman twitters on:
We in the churches have only ourselves to blame for this state of affairs. For too long we have assumed that people will simply absorb their Christianity by growing up in a Christian country.
But the landscape has:
Changed behind the ecclesiastical net curtains, and a generation has grown up not knowing the stories, the art, the traditions, the music, the architecture and the history that has expressed our Christian identity.
And this, somehow, is a bad thing?
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
March 19th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
The Equinox is the real reason for Easter and it is this weekend, not in three weeks time. Being in a job which allows flexible holidays, I like to have Friday and Monday off to recognise this. It is a good time to get in some preliminary gardening.
March 19th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
Here we go again. Whaaaah. People are no longer kowtowing to our great religious tradition…..that we stole from somebody else. We’re sooooo persecuted.
Why can’t they just sink into irrelevance like adults?
March 19th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Easter is about as Christian as Christmas.
March 19th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
I wouldn’t say young brits are clueless about easter, they probably realise it is a load of tosh and just ignore it to enjoy a couple of days off work.
As a side note. Standby for the usual poster slogans and crosses stuck up hills proclaiming some bloke died for me – yeah right. At this time of year my nearest town has message boards containing religious bollocks on the entrance roads. Every year I complain to the council about these signs being put on public property and by the side of the road but nothing happens; this year I may have to remove these signs myself or put up my own.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:51 am
Totally with AC Grayling on this “christian culture” bollocks. Christianity was – and remains – a middle eastern death cult that inflicted itself on the real (Graeco-Roman) western world and wrecked everything worthwhile in it for a thousand years, while sneakily appropriating some of the fun stuff so they wouldn’t come across as total killjoys. Stuff them – the West is NOT christian any more – it is WESTERN again.
Looking forward to chewing the head off my choccy rabbit.
March 20th, 2009 at 8:20 am
We know what Easter is about – bunnies, chocolate, chicks (feathered). Every child knows about this fun festival EXCEPT the poor miserable mites brought up by mad religious people. There is no problem. Sod off Christians. The end.
March 20th, 2009 at 8:39 am
So some trendy vicar is complaining that people don’t know the wrong answer.
Talk about clueless!
March 20th, 2009 at 8:49 am
Come on valdemar lets not be discriminatory. Sod off all god-botherers.
March 20th, 2009 at 8:55 am
I don’t have a problem with seeing Chrstians celebrate the so-called Resurrection, and I was brought up in a country that is nominally Christian. However, this biz about not knowing much about it . . . I was talking to my brother some years ago and the word “Christian” came into the conversation, and he said, “Well, I’m a Christian.” He had previously admitted to me that he knew less about the Bible than I do, which is not very much but I keep getting the impression it’s a lot more than many a default Christian does.
If I’d thought about it at the time, I’d have said in response to his claim of being a Christian, “How do you know?” Ah, esprit de l’escalier!
March 20th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Actually, yes, I’d say it’s a tragedy that people don’t know the cultural history of their own nation, or indeed that of their neighbors. Christianity went through a wide variety of forms from the dark ages through the middle ages, was pivotal in the shaping of the idea of Britain as distinct from Europe and inspired artists and writers and is a key element in the ideas that shaped our past. But it is disconcertingly true that ignorance is the in thing these days. And Christians seem to know virtually nothing about their own religion – even less than the minimal grasp other religious people know about theirs. Frankly that’s a damn shame. Nobody knows anything about the classical Greek and Roman myths either these days of course.
The trouble with the English church is that it was once well known that the proper area of study and reverence of the English vicar was steam trains, but alas those days have passed.
March 20th, 2009 at 10:23 am
I coined the word Chino to describe these nominal Christians, particularly with regard to the 2001 census question. A conversation I had regarding the census went like this:
Stonyground: What did you put down for religion on your census form?
Chino: I put Christian.
Stonyground: OK so if I do something wrong, how does some guy being brutally tortured to death 2000 years ago make it alright.
Chino: It doesn’t that’s absurd.
Stonyground: That is the central pillar of Christian belief.
The chino then just gave a shrug and changed the subject.
March 20th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
I’ll believe Christians are serious about Easter the day they can be bothered to market it properly and produce a chocolate Jesus on a cross – I’d buy one if only for the satisfaction of biting his head off in public.
Considering they make such a fuss about folk who walk off with Jesus biscuits you’d think they could get it sorted properly.
March 20th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
My kids know exactly what Easter is all about. Eating as much chocolate as you can without throwing up!
As for the resurrection. Jebus knew he was the bosses son and that when he sacrificed himself he would be brought back to life, so he has a kip in a cave for 3 days then, bingo, Dad wakes him up! Some sacrifice! I sold my bloody motorbike to buy a family car, ‘That’s a sacrifice!
March 20th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
I reckon this Dean looks a bit like Iranian presidant and all round general fuckwit Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But my Mrs reckons David Beckham.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
This atheist isn’t knocking easter.
I always make a few bob out of the xians about this time of year.
The tat is in the shops now. Run! Run!
March 20th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
Wurble. So one of you thinks he looks like a religious nutter, the other thinks he looks like an overpaid retard in silly clothing who only works one day a week.
I’d call it a draw!
March 21st, 2009 at 4:02 am
Jesus and Mo is on it