Jon Christian Ryter -- First Santa, now the Easter Bunny

FIRST SANTA, NOW THE EASTER BUNNY

By Jon Christian Ryter

April 11, 2007

NewsWithViews.com

The antiwar group, DemocracyNow! is convinced Christians promote violence�and they have the evidence to prove it! Cellophane-wrapped discount store Easter baskets that contain plastic assault rifles and cap pistols. Christians, by extension, are bad people who promote violence and racism. In an alert originally sent out by DemocracyNow.org on March 13, 2004 (and repeated by them on March 4, 2007), the antiwar group tried hard to show that Christians, not Islamofascists, are the root cause of the war in the Mideast. While you have likely seen photographs of small Muslim children waving real AK-47s or wearing bomb belts on the Internet, DemocracyNow! wants the American people to erase those images from their mind and replace them with a new one�plastic assault weapons and machine guns in brightly wrapped Easter baskets. Christians promoting war toys! Shame!

In their alert, they wrote: "Protests are intensifying over the arrival of heavily armed soldiers at K-Marts, Walmarts and Rite Aids across the country. The soldiers are not guarding the retail giants from attack. They are toy soldiers armed with assault rifles and machine guns, and they have replaced the traditional front-and-center chocolate bunny in children's Easter Baskets. Christians celebrate Easter as the day the peace-loving Jesus Christ rose from the dead. In Nevada City, some 30 [antiwar demonstrators] converged on K-Mart on Wednesday [March 12, 2003] and demanded the removal of the militarized Easter Baskets..In New York on Sunday [March 9, 2003] a 28-year old mother [Amy Hamilton-Thibert] was arrested at the Astor Place K-Mart in downtown Manhattan. She was wearing a sweater fringed with cellophane grass, white pants, plush slippers, and fuzzy white rabbit ears." Arrested in Nevada City was the DemocracyNow! organizer, Joanna Robinson.

What's wrong with that picture? Three things. First, the Easter Bunny can't be remotely construed to be a religious icon�except, of course, in the mind of idiots who believe the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus are synonymous with the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Second, the antiwar crowd and the underwriters of utopia believe that because the Christian Bible is singularly emphatic that the only way to Heaven is through Jesus Christ, and because the Bible condemns all sin�in particular, homosexuality and abortion, the utopians condemn Christians as pushing a bigoted, racist agenda. Third, the anti-Christians condemn the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan as the modern-day Crusades with America's Christian army evangelizing the Mideast into democracy. Even more, the utopians who are attempting to merge the political, economic and theological lives of the peoples of the world know they can't create a one-world religion as long as Christianity is one of them.

It is frightening that the Christophobes believe that if they even leave a trace of what they construe to be Christian tradition�Santa Claus, Christmas trees, Easter bunnies�Christianity will survive their purge. These icons: Santa Claus, Christmas trees and Easter bunnies are the remnants of ancient secular theology and thus, to those in believe in nothing, they remain bonded to the prevalent religion of the day because they were fused to Christianity in the early days of the Catholic Church by the political leaders of the faith in Rome in the 4th century AD.

Traditional Christmas�Yuletide�Dec. 25�is a pagan event called the Feast of the Winter Solstice. Most of the things we associate with Christmas are pagan in origin. The wassail bowl came directly from ancient Babylon. So did the festive Christmas candles draped in holly. The Christmas tree�common with Yule celebratees�was equally common in pagan Rome and Egypt. (In Egypt, the tree used for pagan rituals was the palm which denoted the pagan deity Baal-Tamar.) In Rome, the fir tree represented the deity Baal-Berith (the goddess mother of Adonis, one third of the pagan triune deity). Shifting the Biblical triune Godhead into pagan theology, the son of the pagan deity is referred to as the Man-branch�or, the son-god, or branch of the mother tree, that brings divine gifts to mankind. As you can see, while the studious Christian knows the Christmas tree has nothing to do with the birth of Christ since Jesus (Joshua in Hebrew) was actually born in late summer, not December. Use of the mistletoe at Christmas is a Druid custom with a pagan Babylonian origin.

Easter is 100% pagan. It's name comes from the pagan term "Eostre," the pagan goddess of spring. It's important for Christians to understand the evolution of their religion from the birth of the first century Christian Church in Palestine through its Roman Catholic detour that gathered to its bosom every pagan event in an attempt to erase the root of those feast days from the memories of man. First, it may come as a shock to some of you, but Jesus Christ really was a practicing Jew. He was crucified on the eve of Passover, or Pesach. Passover is celebrated on the 14th day of Nissan (the first month on the Hebrew calendar) which covers half of March and April. All of the traditional Easter things you were raised with, from hot cross buns to Easter eggs�including Lent�have a pagan origin.

Pagan traditions were very diligently and very deliberately woven into Christianity to do to the pagan religions of the past what the Utopians are attempting to do to Christianity today�erase it from the memory of mankind in as few generations as possible. World government is not possible as long as Christianity exists because Christians know their right to exist without human bondage comes from God not government. Conversely, the atheists who have decided it's necessary to ban God from the 21st century ecoalarmist Garden of Eden know it is absolutely essential to rid the world of Christian thought since Christianity affirms that the rights of men are God-given and because patriotism and national pride are rooted in Christianity.

In May, 1989, the American Bar Association [ABA] sent an advertisement to its members announcing a seminar for "...[a]ttorneys who want to be on the leading edge of an explosive new area of law"�suing churches, Christian leaders and Christian activists who persist in incorporating Christian tenets in secular life. The seminar was entitled: "Expanding Use of Tort Law Against Religions." The ABA intended to implement a new strategy in the century-long battle to destroy Christianity in the United States and around the world. The assault on the Christian Church began shortly after the end of World War II with the birth of the United Nations and the reemergence of the globalist movement that had remained dormant for two decades.

The first attempt to create world government failed when our 28th president, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, was unable to convince Congress to join the League of Nations and surrender America's sovereignty to a world government headquartered in Brussels. In 1989 the Utopians realized they were running out of time. The attack against Christians and the outlawing of Christianity as a racist religion was behind schedule. The globalists were running out of time. Globalization was impatiently waiting in the wings. While the Utopians still don't get it, the clock that is ticking down isn't their clock, it's God's. And His timeline is right on schedule.

The utopians who attempted to create world government at the end of World War I were quick to grasp the reality that the nationalistic fervor that fuels patriotism is rooted in faith�Christian faith. It became very clear to the globalists between the two world wars that, before American sovereignty could be breached the utopians, aided by corrupt political hacks, judges, and bureaucrats, would have to erase Christianity from the hearts, minds and souls of the American people before the United States could be re-shackled to the Old World Order.

The utopians knew for them to win they would have to successfully attack the underpinnings of the 1st Amendment. If they could erode the right of free men to speak on the issues that affected their lives, or prevent free men from expressing their religious beliefs, they would no longer be free and the globalists who were steering the American ship of state towards the shoals of Utopia would win.

Because the American people struggled so hard against impossible odds to gain their freedom from the overlords of Europe, the Founding Fathers of the fledgling United States understood that, more than anything else, it was the patriotic pride of the colonial soldier that buoyed him through a war America should have lost. And it was patriotism that made the United States the greatest nation in the world in the 20th century. The globalists missed their chance in 1920 because the US Senate rejected the League of Nations. But President Franklin D. Roosevelt tricked the people with the Atlantic Charter and the overlords of Utopia got their way in 1946 when the European League of Nations was camouflaged like a Halloween clown in a red, white and blue suit of clothes to the tune of Yankee Doodle and palmed off on the people of the United States as an American institution even though it remained the League of Nations with an American-sounding name.

That year the mindset of the US federal courts changed because the agenda of the power barons of the world changed. The protections of the Bill of Rights was quietly modified to coincide with the protections "guaranteed" by UN Declaration on Human Rights. The restriction placed in the 1st Amendment by the Founding Fathers against their newly formed government: "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." would be flip-flopped by activist federal judges. The restrictions that the Constitution placed only on government were arbitrarily applied against the people whose right to worship as they see fit can not be constitutionally challenged by government.

Just as the American Civil Liberties Union launched a concerted attack on the symbols of Christmas in 2005 by threatening to sue churches, schools and communities that displayed manger scenes or used the word Christian on public property, the ACLU expanded their assault on Christianity to include Easter in 2006. Schools were notified that the term Easter was of Christian origin and using it would open the school boards to possible lawsuits for promoting a religion. Almost overnight Easter pageants in schools became Spring pageants and Easter eggs became spring eggs.

On Hannity & Colmes on March 16, 2005 political consultant Bob Beckel, sitting in for co-host Alan Colmes, noted that the first salvo aimed at the Easter Bunny had been fired when he said "...there may be a new endangered species to add to the national register�the Easter Bunny. Several South Florida shopping malls have renamed the large white rabbit that's handing out plastic eggs to kids with names that don't refer to the Christian holiday, like 'Peter Rabbit' and 'Garden Bunny.'"

A year later, on April 11, 2006 Bill O'Reilly poophahed the notion that the Easter Bunny was under attack after Atlanta Journal columnist Cynthia Tucker wrote: "Still fresh from their holy war against 'holiday trees' and the 'fat guy in the red suit,' talk show hosts are taking up arms in defense of an embattled Easter which they claim is under attack by the same political correctness that supposedly menaced Christmas trees and Santa Claus."

Without due diligence to check his facts, Bill O'Reilly shot from the hip: "First of all," the no-spin talk jock said, "there is no attack on Easter. Only two dumb incidents, one in St. Paul, Minnesota where a secretary was asked to take down decorations featuring the Easter Bunny and one in Georgia, where an Easter event was changed to a "Spring" event. After pressure, its back to an Easter event." I guess O'Reilly would be forced to concede that the World War II did not happen either because there was only one attack on Pearl Harbor. You don't measure the assault by the success of its forays, but by the nature of the threat. In point of fact, at the time O'Reilly opined, a number of attacks against what are construed by the left to be Christian symbols of holidays�Christmas and Easter�have taken place. It appears that, to Bill O'Reilly, before an attack on Christianity can be construed an attack on Christianity, it must originate from the ACLU or some other far left activist group or organization and not from the personal biases of one or more politically correct bureaucrats within the community or organization that is being threatened. Coercive secularism from authoritative bureaucrats is no less an assault on religious freedom than a coercive threat from the lawyers of civil rights groups.

The most recent attempt at coercive secularism against what was construed as a religious icon came on March 23 of this year and occurred at the Tiverton Middle School in Tiverton, Rhode Island. The Easter Bunny was to have made a personal appearance at a Craft Fair at the Middle School with a photo op for students to have their pictures taken with fuzzy bunny.

The photo op was to be a fundraising event for the Parent-Teacher Council. The photo shoot was arbitrarily canceled at the urging of School Board vice-chairman Michael Burk who believed [a] an appearance by the Easter Bunny might be inappropriate, and [b] the use of the word "Easter" made the photo shoot a Christian event, thus violating the separation of Church and State. Burk, an admitted ex-Catholic, simply didn't get it. Nor did School Superintendent William Rearick who arbitrarily canceled the appearance on Burk's request believing the use of the word "Easter" violated the separation of Church and State. That's what happens when secularist revisionists with no experience in constitutional law are allowed to tamper with traditions�secular or religious.

But because Burk or Rearick were not threatened, bullied or intimidated by the ACLU talk jocks like Bill O'Reilly do not perceive Christian rights as being threatened, or symbols�albeit incorrectly so�of Christian holidays as being under attack. Ignorant, liberal do-gooders can do as much damage to individual rights as a barrage of civil rights lawyers. In Tiverton, the Easter Bunny was renamed Peter Rabbit and the craft fair went on as scheduled. The word "Easter" was plucked from the announcement to avoid criticism from the PC police or attention from the ACLU.

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While the ACLU did not orchestrate the Tiverton decision, the ACLU offered an opinion after-the-fact. "Public schools," Steve Brown, Executive Director of the Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union said, "should not be promoting Easter celebrations, and to the extent that the school districts try to avoid that problem they should be commended." Adding insult to injury was the view of Father Bernard Healy of the Catholic Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island who didn't believe the issue was serious enough to defend. "The underlying theme here is serious," he admitted, adding that the Easter Bunny "...is not one of those that I would go to the barricades to defend." Father Healy doesn't realize that when it comes to individual liberty, there are no insignificant issues because the utopians learned long ago that when they nibble on the corners of liberty no one pays attention. When freedom is lost they are generally clueless how it happened.