Easter is magic to me, simply magic.
And not in that wonderful, let’s-all-celebrate-family-and-the-death-and-resurrection-of-Jesus kind of way. I mean, really real magic in a Las Vegas kind of way. We’ve all seen magicians pull a rabbit out of a hat, but pulling a painted egg out of a rabbit’s ass in plain site of a guy hanging on a cross is a pretty cool trick, you gotta admit.
And that whole Jesus thing, that’s a David Copperfield-quality bit of misdirection in and of itself, if ya ask me. The ability of the church to turn a pagan holiday into a Christian one always astounds, doesn’t it? Always brings down the house. I can almost hear the fourth century Bishops puzzling it out:
Scene I, Act 1
Date: 325 AD
Setting: The Council of Nicaea
Christian Sect Leader One (CSL1): Okay, that’s the Winter equinox covered, and we can do that reverse-psychology thing with the fall solstice…
Christian Sect Leader Two (CSL2): …I love that Halloween thing – the irony kills me…
CSL1: …and the crucifixion/passover timing is a natural. But how are we going to tie it in with fertility rights so the pagans buy in?
CSL2: Hmm… Eggs?
CSL1: Say wha…?
CSL2: Eggs, I said eggs. They represent fertility and reproduction and profligation.
CSL1: Profligation?
CSL2: Sure! “…All your eggs in one basket”, and “ You can’t make an omelet without…” Eggs will sub-consciously encourage more extravagant offerings. We’ll give them eggs, which we can leverage for next to nothing, and they’ll feel obligated to give back.
CSL1: Brilliant.
CSL2: (Beaming) Thanks!
CSL1: I think we still need a spokes-model though. Eggs are decidedly un-sexy by themselves and, well, the dead and bloody Christ-on-a-stick thing may work for guilty manipulation, but we need something to keep people from slitting their wrists.
CSL2: Hmmm, good point.
(crickets)
Constantine: I like bunnies. They’re fuzzy and soft and taste great with eggs. And they fuck a lot, which kinda ties in with the fertility thing.
CSL1 and CSL2: (in unison) Bunnies it is.
This level of sophisticated illusion has always awed me. We celebrate this holiest of Christian pagan-holiday-conversions with a holiday on the day Jesus died, a big meal on the day that the Saviour would have been in hell, the disciples all mopey and trying to figure out what to do next (at least the entrepreneurial ones would have been), and then head back to work to celebrate his resurrection which made so much profit possible! *sniff* Heart-warming!
Here’s to bunnies and eggs, religious manipulation and all things commercial and profitable! Happy Easter!
