The "Cousin IT" Nativity

Some Nativity scenes can be worthy of Halloween.

Eating The Chocolate Bunny: No Profound Easter Message Inside

It's Tastier Than A Fortune Cookie, 

But Still Leaves You Hungry 

For Something More Meaningful

The triumph of Madison Avenue (advertising) is in its ability to take something so frivolous, so inane, so inconsequential and make it into something universally loved and, therefore, marketable.

Easter is neither frivolous nor inane. And while the concept of a dying-and-rising god has been used before, it is not inconsequential to those who believe it. No, Easter is a joyous, but solemn event, one that affirms a very strong set of beliefs. It is a time of hope and love through God, man and nature.


A rabbit that magically sh*ts colored eggs is frivolous. It is ludicrous. It is totally inconsequential. It is a totally fake, pastel, rendition of spring without even redeeming pagan qualities. With the exception that he represents the Holy Grail of marketing, the Easter Bunny and his milieu do not serve as anything else but icing on a cake that does not exist. He reigns in chocolaty goodness over self-indulgence while sitting on a golden throne of greed. His history as the symbol of fertility has long given way to second-rate graphics illustrators and Beatrice Potter. In meaning, Santa far surpasses this ill-bred hare.


According to historians, the concept of an Easter Bunny originated in the Alsace part of upper Germany. The tradition of children making "nests" for the Spring Equinox (Easter) whereupon the next day they would find brightly colored eggs was brought over by German settlers to the Pennsylvania Dutch settlements and the nests became "baskets" over time. The parallels to Kris Kringle were not lost to the earliest of Madison Avenue habitues: jolly ole' elf and warm fuzzy bunny, both bear gifts to kids (although it may not be wise to ask where the eggs were previously). The retail season also needs a boost at that time, it being after Valentine's Day in that lull before Mother's Day. And the world loves pastels, so dry goods sales can get rid of those awful cottons nixed by current fashionistas.


So even with all the cardboard fakery isn't it fun to indulge in a little innocence? The operative word here is, I believe, indulge. Easter indulgence actually puts Christmas indulgence to shame: the gifts are mostly superfluous and there never seems to be enough sugar-coating. Once I tried to bring some actual creativity into our family's egg-coloring by purchasing large (very large) blown goose eggs and batiking them so that they could be displayed year round, maybe even on the Christmas tree. The result: some unusual eggs by disinterested artists who didn't want to see another batiked egg for a long time... and the Christmas tree never saw an egg.


"Alright, give us a break, it's just a stupid holiday." That's the point: holidays (as in Holy Days) are meant to commemorate, illuminate, and drench us with meanings we are too busy or too distracted to entertain. They exist to give us visions of our lives, magnify them, understand them. Thanksgiving gives us pause to think about our joys. Valentine's Day helps us to consider those around us. St. Patrick's Day instills ethnic pride whatever the background. Mother's and Father's Days bring us closer to parents. Fourth of July engenders not only patriotism, but pride in our national individuality. Memorial Day helps us remember and New Years' Day helps us forget. Labor Day signals the end of summer and the terror of another school year. And speaking of terrors, Halloween helps us laugh at them.

The Easter Bunny holiday not only detracts from the religious holiday, it sucks the meaning out of it like some candied black hole. The image of Christ on the cross being offered a colored egg by the Easter Bunny is funny and shocking at the same time (yes, there is a card for it) but commercialism will always strive for a new low with that fuzzy/furry/white/pink/yellow/lime-green rodent. Maybe the real meaning of Easter and its Bunny is to show us just how off-the-mark we can be with things like holidays.


Then again, maybe there is no meaning to the Easter Bunny because there never was a meaning intended in the first place.


You gonna eat those chocolate ears?

Kimberly Daniels: The Ghost Behind Robertson's Rant About Demonic Halloween Candy!

Pat Robertson has given us a glimpse of his long-surmised senility: he said that Halloween candy was "prayed over" by witches! Of course, he did it on his website under the auspices of a guest writer: Kimberly Daniels.

The website has since taken down the article, but you can view it HERE. The following is an excerpt from the article. It falls into the category of "You can't make this sh*t up!":

During this period demons are assigned against those who participate in the rituals and festivities. These demons are automatically drawn to the fetishes that open doors for them to come into the lives of human beings. For example, most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches.

I do not buy candy during the Halloween season. Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store. The demons cannot tell the difference.

Like she knows any.

Unfortunately, this woman is scarier than most of the demons she warns against. Her website for KDMI (Kimberly Daniels Ministries International) is filled with militarism like you wouldn 't believe. And she's very vocal about her dislike for Barack Obama:

He claims to be a Christian, but in his book The Audacity of Hope he calls the first chapter of Romans an "obscure" passage of Scripture. God's admonition about the sin of homosexuality is hardly obscure. It is very clear!

Jesus is the only way to God, and God will surely send homosexuals to hell if they do not turn from their ways and accept Christ—just as He will do for all other sinners who do not trust Jesus.

So, for trying to achieve equal right for gays and lesbians, Obama is not "Christian." Kimberly Daniels, on the other hand, considers herself VERY Christian albeit VERY homophobic.

She also hates CNN and The View (?!):

…We welcome homosexuals, devil worshippers, New Agers, those who believe in the ministry of inclusion and any other beliefs or religions to the war. Room. Just know where you are going…into the midst of a community of believers that are radical of Jesus Christ. We welcome your comments and concerns but please know that if they do not line up…we will tear them down! Just as antichrist spirits rule in their arenas with programs such as the View and CNN News, we will rule in the dominion Christ has called us to reign in. People calls these news liberal…we call them antichrist.

So Barbara Walters, Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Elizabeth Hasselbeck and Anderson Cooper are anti-Christs? Oh, and don't forget Shirley MacLaine. Of course, Robertson is proud of her!

Again, this one is very scary. She's right about the pitfalls of Halloween candy, though. Would you want any of your kids trick or treating at HER house?

Truly Scary, Part I: Through A Halloween Hell House - Via Child Abuse, Forced Conversion, Sarah Palin, ObamaCare And Religious Intolerance.

Each short skit at a Hell House is equal to a mini snuff movie.

- Secular Parent Magazine

Those of us who hail from the Stone Age (aka The Fabulous Fifties) remember Halloween as a time of fun (but serious) costumes and as much candy as you could puke.

It was fun until someone put a razor blade in some poor kid's apple. After that, there was nothing left for Halloween to become but religiously political (or vice versa).

And that's when the concept of Hell Houses began. I've written about them before - those places that try to bring fear to minds and souls via religious bigotry. A bigotry that is actually franchised by one Keenan Roberts, an Assemblies of God pastor in Colorado who originally hailed from Roswell, New Mexico (yes, THAT Roswell, of alien sightings fame and legend). BTW: the Assemblies of God Church in Wasilla, AK is the church where Sarah Palin was prayed upon by witch hunter Thomas Muthee.

OMG! Roberts - Assemblies of God - Roswell - Sarah Palin - Thomas Muthee - witches - Halloween! Okay, that's the totally disjointed reasoning of a Hell House producer, which, by the way, number in the thousands across the country. Last year's sale of Hell House kits topped 3000.

The best article written to date on Hell Houses is one by a OpEdNews writer, Theresa "Darklady" Reed and aptly titled

Halloween "Hell Houses" Act Out Depraved Christian Wet Dreams

According to ReligiousTolerance.org, a typical Hell House experience includes graphic and factually inaccurate re-enactments of such things as the murder of Columbine High School student Cassie Bernall's by a fellow student who allegedly killed her for her faith. Joining this scene are those depicting innocents being sacrificed by Wiccans during Satanic rituals, demon possession brought on by exploring the occult, witches forcing teens to commit murder, and drunk drivers slaughtering their passengers. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 have provided modern Hell House organizers with new scenarios to present, as well.

Shouldn't Hell Houses be known more commonly as Hate Houses? Are they effective in promoting hatred? After you read this post, check out the next installment on this series.

From ReligiousTolerance.org:

The Rev. Ballard's "Hell House" in Warren County OH was criticized by Doreen Cudnik, executive director of Stonewall Cincinnati. She said that the display "is out of touch with AIDS in the year 2000. To say gay equals AIDS equals burning in hell has the dangerous potential to lead to hate crimes against the gay community."

A Christian radio station in Fairfield, OH terminated ads which promoted Kings Point Church of God's Hell House because the ads invited listeners to "come see the funeral of a homosexual AIDS patient." The Cincinnati Enquirer said that the ads were "blatant gay bashing."

As with anything extreme, Hell Houses open themselves for over-the-top parody. The internet's Landover Baptitst Church has been lampooning Hell Houses for years (they never actually have a Hell House, but describe their's on the website. Last year's Landover Baptist Hell House proffered

"Real Corpses from Turkey's Earthquake that would have been wasted in mass graves, will (sic) frozen and delivered to Landover Baptist Church, to be used in the Godly purpose of winning souls!

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theresa-darklady-reed/halloween-hell-houses-act_b_139825.html

This year, however, Landover Baptist goes straight to the jugular of Christofascists by presenting not a Hell HOUSE, but an Obama Care Hell HOSPITAL!

Visitors will line up and be seated inside Hell Hospital's filthy waiting room, which is the size of nearly two football fields. "This is REAL TERROR," says Pastor. "Visitors will wait for hours -- sometimes days! -- just like they'll wait in one of Obama's hospitals just to get a used Band-Aid. Lead paint will be peeling off the walls, cathode ray televisions will be spooling hours of PBS specials on the Obama family's clothing and eating habits, all while hundreds of Baptist University students painted to look like Mexicans wearing little pink ears and snouts mingle with the crowd, dancing around sombreros and coughing into the faces of white children, passing on swine flu and Chlamydia," Pastor continued. "It is a real rip-roaring production!"

And...

The large community pool previously used to clean retards and now posing as a mandatory water abortion clinic will also double as baptismal pool.

A signed medical waiver is supposedly required before entering the Landover Baptist Hell House, which, among other things, hopes to bring salvation to "teenagers influenced by the poison of negro music."

This is not only satire, but BRILLIANT satire because it skewers Christofascists and politics at the same time.

Of course, no one could deliver sharp objections to Hell Houses like atheist Richard Dawkins. The video below demonstrates that Pastor Keenan Roberts can't really answer most of the questions with anything else but "That's what I believe." Roberts comes off as the typically unyeilding preacher who (secretly) revels in producing such gruesome scenes.

Perhaps Hell Houses really do act out the dark side of the Christofascist psyche. Then again, if there is another side other than the dark one, we've never seen it.

Just a thought.

Truly Scary, Part III: Leviticus and Sad Puppy Dog Eyes

When You Use The Bible As A Weapon - Someone's Gonna Get Hurt,
And It Won't Be The Pulpit Pimp!

Michael Jones, GayRights.change.org:

Last weekend, two men beat up Jack Price in his neighborhood of Queens, NY. They crushed his lungs, broke his ribs and his jaw and lacerated his spleen. After he was rushed to the hospital, he was put into a medically induced coma in order to treat him. Jack Price is gay.

So, BFD. Happens all the time. But this time was made different by his assailants' adherence to the Bible's Book Of Leviticus. It was a hate crime spurred on by the admonitions of "The Good Book." In an interview at the scene:

"I don't want no man blowing me a kiss either. I mean things happen," said Marcel Gelmi, a friend of one of the attackers. "I've been beat up like that too, but you don't see me on the news and my family crying and this and that. Wounds heal."

After that statement, Glemi showed the reporters the tattoo he had on his arm:

"Leviticus. You should not lay with a man as one does with a woman. It's an abomination."

A tattoo. Not of a flag, not of a snake, not of any emblem, but a specific passage from scripture enlisted by homophobes everywhere. So how extreme in your homophobia do you have to be to wear it proudly on your arm? Are there Christfascist gangs out there?

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown summed up this beating pretty damn well: "This is probably the most vicious and brutal incident that I've seen, captured as it was on videotape."