Actual news flash! Anti-woke Right launches War on Easter so it can pick a fight and blame someone else for starting it! 

Happy Easter, everyone!

Given the nature of the occasion – the most solemn in the liturgical calendar – it’s not really a season associated with rip-roaring fun and overindulgence like some other Christian feast days, most notably Christmas. 

Let’s face it, folks, spin it any way you want, but state-sanctioned torture and murder of political and religious dissidents is never going to come across as a really cheerful topic. 

What’s more, Easter moves around, so during the long years between the time communications throughout the Roman Empire fell apart and the opening of the Information Highway, it was almost impossible to pin down in a layperson’s mind exactly when Easter was supposed to happen in any given year. 

I mean, seriously, until DARPA invented the Internet, who knew how to figure out when it was 21 days after the Paschal Full Moon, whatever the heck that is? (A priest, that’s who. And who wants to talk to a priest if they can avoid it?)

So even if somebody had been of a mind to gin up a War on Easter, nobody would have bothered. I mean, c’mon, it’s not much fun and almost nobody knows when it’s going to happen, so who would’ve made the effort? 

But – and this is an actual news flash! – the perpetually aggrieved anti-woke Christian-Nationalist Right has declared that there is a War on Easter.

I saw it on the Internet yesterday, and you probably did too. 

Having pretty well lost the War on Christmas, which also never really existed either until the Right made it up so that they could pick a fight and blame someone else for starting it, maybe they just felt that if they did the same thing again this time it would have a different result. 

Anyway, the evidence for a War on Easter is pretty skimpy. On this side of the World’s Longest Undefended Border, it was because of a tweet by Veterans Affairs Canada – an organization that always makes me think of Charlie Farquharson and the Apartment for Veterans’ Affairs. (Charlie, we miss you!) 

“We want to wish Veterans, current members of the @CanadianForces and @rcmpgrcpolice and their families a happy March holiday season,” someone at the federal department tweeted, inclusively and doubtless innocently, with an image of two cheerful Navy cooks making deviled eggs. 

The result was predictable, possibly even worse than if they’d been cooking a nice Christian ham or a turkey acceptable to members of a broader selection of major religions, most of which, it should also be noted, have major celebrations in March and April too.

Basically, the reaction was, “What the #$&% is a March holiday? They’re trying to cancel Easter!” 

South of the Medicine Line, where the separation of church and state is sensibly entrenched in the U.S. Constitution – “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” – the same types nevertheless jumped to similar conclusions because President Joe Biden had noted somewhere that March 31 is the Transgender Day of Visibility. 

“Blasphemous,” blustered Donald Trump, who has promised to ignore the First Amendment if he is returned to the White House, and the results on the Interwebs require no further description here whatsoever. It only encourages them. 

Never mind that, because the date of Easter moves around, it doesn’t always fall on March 31, which is also the feast day of Saint John of the Ladder and numerous other saints, which no one has ever called blasphemous, or even unseemly. 

The Fathers of Confederation, who generally did a better job of organizing Constitutional principles than the Founding Fathers of the United States, fell down on church and state, however, leaving the door open a crack to the establishment of a state religion in this country – Church of England, Church of Scotland, Church of … heaven forfend! 

Thankfully, 19th Century political reality meant we’ve pretty well followed the American path of sending church and state to separate corners, and Canada’s a better place for it.

It also means there is no need for a War on Easter because … who cares as long as we don’t have to care? 

Anyway, given the global aspirations of neoliberalism and its utter domination of the Canadian political scene, it’s quite defensible to argue that if there is a state religion in Canada, as in the United States, it’s shopping. 

Which is why, of course, the malls are likely to be open everywhere today, and if you’re looking for a real War on Easter, that would be where you’d find it. 

Next year, by the way, Easter’s in April, so we don’t need to worry about any more March madness, let alone a March hare,* as long as Veterans Affairs has the good sense not to tweet about it. 

South of the 49^th Parallel, alas, it’s harder to predict confidently that things will be copacetic next Easter.

Here endeth the lesson. 

*Since I have made passing mention of the Easter Bunny, readers concerned about a putative War on Easter can rest easy about that creature’s origins. Says the Wikipedia: “It was widely believed (as by Pliny, Plutarch, Philostratus, and Aelian) that the hare was a hermaphrodite. The idea that a hare could reproduce without loss of virginity led to an association with the Virgin Mary, with hares sometimes occurring in illuminated manuscripts and Northern European paintings of the Virgin and Christ Child.” For those of you here in Alberta who still believe in science, suffice it to say that Pliny, Plutarch, Philostratus, and Aelian were mistaken.