On one hand, I can totally get behind the message of this public announcement:
“Seattle Public Schools has been receiving numerous questions regarding the District’s policy on the celebration of religious holidays. We have a ‘Religion and Religious Accommodation’ policy, approved by the School Board in 1983, stating that ‘no religious belief or non-belief should be promoted by the School District or its employees, and none should be disparaged.'”
On the other hand, the thing they’re objecting to?
A local high school sophomore, Jessica, on a community service project was volunteering for a third-grade class at Seattle Public Schools. “At the end of the week I had an idea to fill little plastic eggs with treats and jelly beans and other candy, but I was kind of unsure how the teacher would feel about that,” said Jessica, reports MyNorthwest. “She said that I could do it as long as I called this treat ‘spring spheres.’ I couldn’t call them Easter eggs.”
…Alright, I know I’m a rabid militant extremist angry atheist and all, but even this seems a bit a silly to me.
For one, they’re certainly not spheres – and we wonder why math scores are so low.
But are Easter eggs even religious anymore? When I was a kid, I never really thought about spiritual dogma as I was checking under the couch – I just wanted some chocolate. Or maybe a dollar bill if I was really lucky. I think I may lump this in with singing about Santa Claus – something that maybe used to vaguely link to religion, but now is thrown around for entertainment purposes and happens to retain a historical name.
I do find it amusing that Christians are the ones flipping out about this. Pfftttt, like Easter eggs have anything to do with Christianity. Where are the angry emails from pagans?
EDIT: Apparently the Seattle Public Schools haven’t been able to verify this story yet, and the radio show where it was first presented is a conservative pundit. Who smells a manufactured controversy so people can make a stink about those evil atheists taking god out of our schools? (Thanks, Liz)
I was raised in a secular household, and we received easter eggs, whole baskets in fact. Now that I’m an adult, I mainly associate easter eggs and spring with this curious tradition my friend does where she tries to balance an egg on its bottom on the Spring Equinox. I lost patience with trying to do it after seeing her do it so effortlessly, so I smashed the bottom of the egg gently so it would have a dent to balance on. Hehehehe.
I’m skeptical that the story is real. The private school isn’t named, the public elementary school isn’t named, the radio show she called into is conservative talk. It sounds manufactured to me…
I’m all for not endorsing religions, but this kind of stuff takes it too damned far. Easter eggs are no more Christian than Santa or hanging colored balls off of a tree.
Here in Sweden easter means about nothing to anyone but the fundamentalists (those few that exist) or the episcopalians. It’s a holiday the friday but that’s about it. Easter-eggs has no real connection with easter here, other than in namesake, and the name comes from the feast the swedes of old had as spring would lessen the harshness of winter.If I were to celebrate easter I think I would make a Jesus pinhata. Beat the shit out of the saviour to get the candy inside. Fun and mythologically correct.
Completely aside from whether the story is true or not… If including the religious title of “Easter” is unacceptable (and everyone is quite right about the Christians not having a monopoly on plastic eggs and candy, making the title sort of pointless), was there something wrong with “spring eggs”? Really? It has to be spheres?
Equinox Eggs?
My atheisty kids look for Easter eggs every Easter and at no time have they found one and looked to the heavens and said “praise YAHWEH! ” That being said, I can see how some Muslims and Jews may find Easter eggs obnoxious.
Wait…God’s still in public school?That explains so much.
Shake the egg- then the yolk breaks loose and works like a weight in the bottom. Works pretty much any day, the equinox thing is a myth.
I firmly believe that Easter and Christmas lost their religious nature a long long time ago. An interesting analysis is companies trying to keep a trademarked name (if it becomes the generic form, they can lose ownership). Kleenex, for example, is only a brand, but the name has become used to refer to facial tissue. At least here in Canada, Sea Doo and Ski Doo have become the words used for personal watercraft and snowmobile. Well, the same “rule” applies to holidays. Despite the religious origins of these two holidays, they really don’t feel all that religious anymore. Especially easter…what the hell do eggs, chocolate, rabbits laying chocolate eggs and flowers have to do with Jesus dying. At least Christmas has religious songs, the nativity scene, angel or star atop the tree to remind us haha.
As an agnostic pagan, I’ve always really liked Easter. To me it’s only second to Halloween. The bunnies. The eggs. The chocolate. The flowers. The scheduling of the holiday. The name. All of it is so delightfully pagan.
I’m at a loss for how passing out Easter eggs (and calling them Easter eggs) is going to affect anyone’s beliefs or lack thereof. It’s not promoting religion; it’s acknowledging that religion exists.
Bread and circuses.The State provides bread (public education) via taxation and inflation and the circuses (separation of Church/State drama) ensues.
Rightwing-manufactured controversy? I am shocked. Shocked!As for me. I’ll take a Zombie Bunny any day: http://www.thinkgeek.com/inter…
I guess they got bored complaining about the environmentally friendly eggs that the Obamas are going to use this year at the White House and needed some other outrage to manufacture.
Not that this is much evidence either way, but I thought I remembered “spring spheres” from some really stupid chain email my fundamentalist aunt sent me. If that’s the case, then this rumor actually dates back at least several years.
Was this bunny part of the Zombie apocalypse that hit Jerusalem after jesus was nailed but no one accept Matthew noticed (Matt 27:52-53).
Okay, granted, it is a small thing, but it is also a fairly and evenly applied rule that some religious person wants a special exception to because cultural norms favor their religion. Yes, Christians, the rules apply to you. Suck it up.
Calling them Easter eggs invokes Christianity, whether you want it to or not, and that has the potential to alienate and exclude non-Christians. It also gives their silly zombie holiday a legitimacy that it should not possess in the public arena.
I loved Easter as a kid. I started, at some point, to be skeptical of the bunny thing, but my mom was really good at hiding chocolate eggs in the park in such a way that I didn’t see her doing it (or I suck at catching people do stuff like that). And even though we were supposed to be Catholics, we were Christmas-only catholics, so Easter wasn’t even spoiled by having to sit in church all morning before breakfast.
Our stupid rabid right make up stories like this every year around Christmas. Apparently Birmingham city council banned Christmas a few years ago and replaced it with Winterval. Of course it’s total BS, made up the screaming insanity of the British right wing tabloids. But it is believed to be true by the vast majority of Brits… it has become a “known truth” despite the annual rebuttals issued by the council.
Equinox Oblate Spheroids?
Prolate spheroids.