God and peeps: Finding meaning in the season
JANESVILLE — Jesus would be so proud.
This year, the average consumer is expected to spend $131.04 on Easter-related items, according to the National Retail Foundation’s 2011 Easter Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey.
That’s up from last year’s $118.60, but still short of pre-recession levels.
Even so, that’s a national total of $14.6 billion for Easter bonnets, Easter flowers, Easter cards, and, of course, marshmallow Peeps.
Is Easter slowly becoming the new Christmas, a religious holiday that’s slowly giving way to the secular?
Hardly.
Children’s Easter baskets might be getting bigger, but that doesn’t mean it’s impacting their spiritual lives.
God and Peeps
For members of mainstream denominations, Lent provides a buffer against the cultural excesses of the Christmas season.
For 40 days, parochial school kids are involved in prayers, fasting and almsgiving—the three duties of the season.
They’re encouraged to sacrifice by giving up something—video games, soda, smacking their sisters—or by doing something extra to help others.
The reward for goodness isn’t presents, it’s Easter.
Mary Muller, certified religious educator and youth minister at St. John Vianney Catholic Church, said her students are encouraged to look beyond the basics of giving up/taking on.
“I always ask them, ‘What are you replacing it with?’” Muller said.
When they miss something they’ve given up, she asks them to use that moment to think about whom they need to pray for or how they can be Christ’s representatives on earth.
Those serve as repeated reminders of the season’s meaning.
The idea isn’t to renounce the secular world with its chocolate bunnies and jellybeans but to embrace the opportunities to practice their faith.
“They’re able to live out everyday life out there,” Muller said.
The Lenten journey helps them become “more aware” of their beliefs.
Here’s another advantage Easter has: The signs associated with the season—eggs, lilies, lambs— all are Christian symbols, Muller noted.
Fake grass and true grace
The Rev. Wendee Nitz said she doesn’t see the secular and religious holidays as being “in competition.”
Instead of sharply defining cultural practices, places or habits as secular or religious, good or bad, the challenge is to find God wherever you are—even if you’re in the Easter goods aisle of your favorite big box store.
That’s not a license to thoughtlessly spend or ignore the needs of others.
“I’m a mom, and I’ve been in those toy aisles,” Nitz said, with a laugh in her voice. “I have to look at what are priorities and needs, and what are wants and wishes.”
The key is to be in the moment, to “truly be present.” That allows believers to experience a “moment of grace, a moment of divine” anytime or anywhere, Nitz said.
That’s not new age hocus-pocus. Most of us—believers and nonbelievers alike—are so caught up in the rush of life that we make decisions without thinking much about them.
We’re human, we overdo it and find ourselves bringing home bags of useless fake grass and enough candy to sicken a grade school class.
But that’s probably not what we value.
“Being in the moment” helps believers acknowledge what they value and, perhaps, make different choices.
“We have to remind ourselves of who we are and whose we are,” Nitz said. “It takes a calmer heart, it takes a community.”
It also takes the ability to forgive ourselves and others when we—or they—don’t live up to expectations.
Nitz said she loves the season bookended by Christmas and Easter.
Christmas tells people that God is apart of their lives, Nitz said.
At Easter, God says “I will never leave you.”
Apr 28, 2011 at 8:31 a.m.
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Max - you mention that GF has an opportunity to change. This doesn't seem to match your previously stated, biblically sound, opinion that god hates some people and had created them specifically to torture forever, all of His greater glory of course. If GF was created for that purpose he would not have any "opportunity" as you state in your post.
On another note - how would creating something then torturing it for eternity bring glory to the creator of galaxies?
Apr 26, 2011 at 11:18 a.m.
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maxdetail, your strawman accusation is a ruse. Point it out. You got nothing and you know it.
Read your bible.
And if you need to meet someone, go to E Harmony dot com.
Apr 26, 2011 at 11:13 a.m.
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Gee whiz, I just stopped by to say how happy I am that you've got another thread to bring you out of suspension. I'm excited for you. I'm always relieved to know you're still alive and have been given another opportunity, by God in His mercy, to change.
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I can't guarantee that I can't be stupid in person but it would be a change from you setting up strawmen and knocking them down in the security of anonymity. Anyway, this is your time to play, I won't trouble you further. Squirm little fella.
Apr 26, 2011 at 10:57 a.m.
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maxdetail, if you need an in-person experience with us instead of a forum where participants can exchange his and her thoughts by the relatively pure form of the written word, kindly explain what would take place in-person that would be an improvement on this forum.
Would your comments somehow be less stupid than the ones you leave on this site? If so, why, then, don't you merely write comments that are less stupid than the ones you normally leave here.
Apr 26, 2011 at 10:46 a.m.
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Look at the little sea monkeys go. Swim little sea monkeys, swim.
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This is your life blood boys because here you can set up strawmen and knock them down all the day long. If you want to be scholarly then let's get together and have a scholarly discussion, leave your strawmen at home. Won't happen will it? I'll invite you again though. Is this my 5th invitation to meet? Swim little sea monkeys.
Apr 26, 2011 at 9:32 a.m.
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maxdetail, do you have something of a biblically scholarly nature to offer here, instead of hostility?
Apr 26, 2011 at 9:23 a.m.
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More specifically, a theocracy would not permit freedom of the press.
Before his death, Jesus preached that a new kingdom would take place on earth in the lifetime of the generation he spoke to. Monarchy, democracy, not the same thing.
Apr 26, 2011 at 7:59 a.m.
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gmao - most if not all of christianity was based on prior religions. The son, born of a virgin mother on december 25th, also called the sacrificial lamb, on and on. If you want to take all the pagan elements out of that particular religion you probably would not have anything left.
Apr 26, 2011 at 7:25 a.m.
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Despite some of the artifacts of language used by some of the founding fathers, this country was founded on the atheistic principles of democracy. There's nothing that goes toward democracy in the bible.
Note that the founding fathers didn't form a theocracy. A theocracy would not allow for freedom of speech etc.
Apr 25, 2011 at 6:01 p.m.
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packersfan1... I agree. Goddess of dawn? Seriously... we live in a Pagan culture now, definitely NOT what our country was founded on.
Apr 25, 2011 at 4:19 p.m.
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I'm a Christian, and I hate to see Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter being so commercialized. I usually go to Good Friday and Easter services to remind myself what the Easter season is really all about. Good Friday is remembrance of Christ's death on the cross for our sins. Easter is Jesus rising from the dead. He conquered death for us.
Apr 25, 2011 at 1:55 p.m.
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JC was the 1st zombie
Apr 25, 2011 at 1:31 p.m.
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Doesn't bother me at all - I'm a Pastafarian!
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spag...
...and...
http://www.venganza.org/
Apr 25, 2011 at 11:39 a.m.
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maxdetail,
I is risen.
Apr 25, 2011 at 11:09 a.m.
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what do you mean the Easter Bunny isn't real?
Apr 25, 2011 at 10:51 a.m.
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It's the "American Way". Capitalism at it's finest.
Apr 25, 2011 at 10:41 a.m.
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Once again… More Fodder for the Christian Hate Mongers.. Why are the Comments on other stories always blocked, But ones like this that brings out the Bigotry and hatred Janesville is becoming more and more known for are allowed?.. God Help Us..
Apr 25, 2011 at 10:22 a.m.
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Great link Crunch, thanks. The Hitchens letter was great.
Apr 25, 2011 at 9:14 a.m.
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This article was like water in the desert for you, wasn't it Pro. Where is gazettefan? He must be dying of thirst as well. Go ahead boys, gorge yourselves. It's been awhile. Glug, glug.
Apr 25, 2011 at 8:32 a.m.
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www.godisimaginary.com
Imagine - How did you determine that Eostre is a fairy tale but your god is real?
Apr 24, 2011 at 7:57 p.m.
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what a bunch of nonsense!
The abbreviated history: "Many pagan cultures held spring festivals" hundreds of years ago. One such festival was in celebration of "Eostre, the goddess of dawn." Mental Floss explains that Eostre was "linked to the hare and the egg, both symbols of fertility." As a way to convert the pagans to Christianity, missionaries began turning the festivals into Christian holidays.
God wants us to worship him in SPIRIT AND TRUTH, not fairy tales and new age mumbo jumbo.
Apr 24, 2011 at 7:09 p.m.
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You gonna eat that chocolate bunny?
Apr 24, 2011 at 5:45 p.m.
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I'm really hoping that includes the meal and not just candy and easter baskets! But even so $131.04 on average??
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