Children's Easter Egg Hunt

Today is Easter!  He is Risen!

This week, on our block, there was a children's Easter Egg Hunt party.  The flier which was sent out to announce the party had, in large bold letters, "BYOB!" Then the anagram was explained: "Bring your own basket." Then, in parentheses: (Adults, bring your own bottle if you wish.)

Some Christians believe that the current observance of Easter in the West is totally pagan. What do bunny rabbits, baby chickens, and Easter Eggs have to do with the celebration of the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus from the dead? Others believe that the secular trappings of Easter are harmless and a fun time for children. Regardless of what you think about the current Western observance of Easter, why would adults feel that they must bring alcoholic beverages to every gathering? Even to a children's party?

Fairies Wear Boots

Fairies Wear Boots (1970) is a song by the rock music group, Black Sabbath, about a man who insists that you must believe that he saw “fairy boots” dancing with a dwarf. “You gotta believe me … I tell you no lies … I saw it, I saw it with my own two eyes.”

The lead singer of this song, Ozzy Osbourne, says that he has no idea what the song is about since he wrote the lyrics during a night of hard drugs and drinking. The only reason he knows that he wrote the lyrics is that his friends told him that he did. 

Goin' home, late last night

Suddenly I got a fright

Yeah I looked through a window and surprised what I saw

A fairy with boots and dancin' with a dwarf,

All right now!

Yeah, fairies wear boots and you gotta believe me

Yeah I saw it, I saw it, I tell you no lies

Yeah Fairies wear boots and you gotta believe me

I saw it, I saw it with my own two eyes,

Oh all right now!

Yeah, fairies wear boots and you gotta believe me

Yeah I saw it, I saw it, I tell you no lies

Yeah fairies wear boots and you gotta believe me

I saw it, I saw it with my own two eyes,

All right now!

So I went to the doctor

See what he could give me

He said Son, son, you've gone too far.

'Cause smokin' and trippin' is all that you do.

Fairies Wear Boots lyrics © T.R.O. INC.

In legal usage, eyewitness testimony is considered to be admissible evidence but it must be consistent with known facts, not fanciful, and the eyewitness must be examined carefully to ensure that the chance for intentional or even unintentional bias is minimal. Ancient Jewish practice insisted that eyewitness testimony must be provided by two men of unquestioned character before it could be believed.

Of course, some people will believe in almost anything (ghosts, visits by extraterrestrial beings, telepathy, fairy folk, etc.) just because someone adamantly insists that they “saw it with their own two eyes.”

Religious movements have sprung up around charismatic individuals. These movements seem to be primarily cults of personality, based primarily on the individuals themselves. The founders claim, with no verifiable proofs, to have seen visions (Edgar Cayce), or mysterious holy objects (Mormonism). Some claim to have met Ascended Masters who gave them messages for the world. There are at least twenty religions based on the UFO phenomenon. 

Christian belief in the Resurrection of Jesus is itself based on eyewitness testimony, but with a major qualitative difference. In the Bible, there are numerous reported post-Resurrection appearances of Jesus, one to a group of over 500 people AND there is even an implied challenge to naysayers. If most of the 500 were still alive at the time of Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church, all anyone had to do was hunt them down and ask them what they saw.

"After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep;"    1 Corinthians 15:6

Family Crosses

This last Sunday was Easter day. At the church which my son and his family attend, the families participated in a wonderful ceremony. The parents and their children built small crosses and wrapped them in burlap. Nails were placed in the cross at the points where the hands and feet of Jesus were positioned. The parents read a text explaining the meaning of the cross and the nails and said a family prayer.

Then the parents explained the Resurrection and the children and parents placed flowers and plant branches into the burlap to represent the beauty of life. The parents explained to the children that Jesus was really dead and then rose, defeating death forever.

Afterwards, the families carried the crosses home. There were as many different crosses as there were families. The crosses were all different. The crosses were all the same. The crosses were all beautiful. Just like us.

Poinsettia: The Christmas Star

Many people think that the large red leaves of the beautiful poinsettia plant are the flowers.  Actually the flowers are quite tiny and are a yellowish-white color.  The leaves are sometimes also colored pink, white, yellow or green.  The plants, which bloom in December, are also known as “the Christmas Star,” “the lobster flower,” “the Mexican flame leaf,” and “las Flores de Noche Buena.” Since the early nineteenth century, poinsettias have had a close association with the Christmas holiday in the United States.

Poinsettias are indigenous to Mexico and Central America so it makes sense that the first known mention of poinsettias is in Aztec sources. The flowers were used as a source of a red dye to color clothing.  The Aztecs saw the intense red color as a symbol of purity.

There are two very similar Mexican legends about the origins of the plant, both involving children.  In both legends, poor children could not afford to buy flowers so they lovingly collected weeds to place on the Christmas nativity crèche at their church.  As the congregants prayed, the offering was blessed as the weeds turned into a blazing red display.

Franciscan priests in Taxco, Mexico in the seventeenth century used poinsettias in their celebration of the Feast of Santa Pesebre.  A pesebre is a nativity scene similar to a crèche.

The earliest name for the plants was the Aztec cuetlaxochitl.  The most common modern name comes from Joel Roberts Poinsett (1779-1851), who brought the plants to the United States in 1825.  Poinsett was the first United States Minister to Mexico.

The Aztec understanding of the meaning of the poinsettia speaks to me: purity, especially since some Christians have come to associate the intense red color of the plants with the Blood of Christ.  It is sometimes forgotten that the most important Christian holiday is not Christmas, but Easter, which commemorates the death and resurrection of Jesus.

The poinsettia image is from Andre Karwath, a contributor to the Wikimedia Commons Project, and is used under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 2.5 Generic provision.

Earliest Easter Memories

This morning our Sunday School teacher asked each one of us to tell the class about our earliest memories of Easter.  I made the class laugh.

My earliest memory of Easter is from when I was about four or five years old.  My parents got us ready and carried us to the 5 AM Easter Sunrise Service on top of Red Mountain .  I remember being angry because I was going to miss the 6 AM broadcast of the Gumby television series.

Gumby Episode #28, "Melon Felons" is below.

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Film Comment: The Red Balloon

One day as he's walking down one of the old and empty streets of Montmartre, a little boy named Pascal sees a large shiny red balloon with its thick cord loosely wrapped around the top of a lamp post. being a boy, he shimmies up the pole to claim his prize and soon learns a secret. The balloon is alive.

The balloon follows Pascal around town and hovers outside his bedroom window after his mother throws it out of the house. Pascal secretly lets it into his room through his window.

The next day the balloon goes to school with Pascal and waits outside for him. The children of the town take a liking to the balloon, then some take a wanting to it, then some decide it would be fun to pop it. Pascal does his best to escape and to protect his treasure, but he fails and the balloon ends up as a shriveled pile of limp rubber in a bare field of rocks and dirt. Then something wonderful happens.

If you haven't seen The Red Balloon (Le ballon rouge, 1954), I won't ruin it for you. You need to see this wonderful classic children's film for yourself. (Yes, I know you're an adult. So what?) Many people will remember The Red Balloon from their childhood. Watch it again and recapture your childlike wonder and delight. Then watch it again and turn on your Christian adult eyes. This film has been described as a childhood fable of friendship, an allegory about love and loss, a minor trifling fantasy, and many other things.

The director of The Red Balloon, Albert Lamorisse (the real life father of the little boy Pascal, whose name means "Easter"), was a Roman Catholic and intentionally or not, he has filled the story with Christian symbolism.

The balloon knocks at Pascal's door; numerous friendly people (angels?) shelter Pascal and the balloon from the rain; the balloon causes discord within Pascal's family; the religious authorities do not respond favorably to the balloon; the children at first love the balloon and then want to kill it; after being killed, the balloon is resurrected and takes Pascal along with it.

Children often learn better from being shown than by being told. THis gentle film can be used to illustrate many Christian concepts in a visual manner which children will quickly grasp.

Albert Lamorisse appears to have never explained his intent with this film. He died not long after in a helicopter crash while making another film. He described The Red Balloon simply as a children's story.
I think old Albert knew exactly what he was doing.

He is Risen

The embalmed, unchanged, undecaying body of Vladimir Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, b. 1870, Russia -d. 1924) has lain on display in the Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow since his death in 1924. He has achieved a sort of immortality, but he's been dead since 1924 and he's still dead.

Anti-Anglican Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) wrote, in Auto-Icon: or, Farther uses of the dead to the living, a set of detailed instructions for the care and upkeep of his corpse and how it should be presented (seated in a chair). His presentation is a protest against the use of icons in religious ceremonies; an irreligious use of an icon ( a dead body) usually treated with respect and deference. His head did not respond well to the preservation process and was replaced with a wax one. His real, decaying head was placed on the floor between his feet. Jeremy's irreverence was rewarded when his head was frequently stolen, sometimes held for ransom, and once, was used at a soccer practice. His body is on display at University College London, the first college in England not affiliated with the Anglican Church.

Doubters to the contrary, it's a very old lie, Jesus does not lie in a grave. He rose from the dead on the third day after His crucifixion. The Resurrection is the pivotal event in history. Old Vlad is just a footnote and old headless Jeremy sits in his chair..

The Tree and the Hill

In our restroom at work we have a dry-erase communication board on which someone drew a picture of a several wrapped presents under a Christmas tree. The multicolored drawing is actually quite good, not just "cute."

Adequate, but not great, artist that I am, I added behind the tree a hill topped with three wooden crosses. My addition lasted for several days before someone erased it, leaving the tree and presents. I'm sure they were offended; the gospel is offensive to the world.

Non-Christians (and many Christians) love Santa, the brightly decorated trees, the elves, the mistletoe, the sleigh, happy snowmen, and the spiked egg nog, especially the spiked egg nog. They have no idea what Christmas is about. Christmas was/is the preparation for Easter. From the Beginning of the World, Jesus was coming to die so that we might live. The Gospel, the "good message" or the "true message," is not that Jesus was born in Bethlehem but that He was murdered and rose from death, defeating death for us.