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Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Passed Over?

I was in Walgreen's the other day buying drastically discounted Easter candy. Easter candy is my favorite of all holiday-oriented candy. It doesn't include anything nasty like circus peanuts (Halloween) or peanut brittle (Christmas). The candy itself is all stellar: jelly beans, chocolate, chicks & ducks Sweettarts. Plus it has the added bonus of being adorned in all of the best and brightest pastel colors.

Anyway, I was in Walgreen's buying my after-Easter candy and the clerks were in the process of moving it from the "Seasonal" aisle to the discount shopping cart abyss. One of the clerks was said that she had put the Passover items on sale that morning and the other clerk told her to take them off of the sale because Passover hadn't happened yet. The following dialogue follows their resulting conversation:

Clerk A: But I thought Passover was always when Easter was?
Clerk B: No, Passover and Easter are two different holidays. Passover usually happens near Easter though.
A: Oh. What religion celebrates Passover anyway?
B: I don't know. Muslim, I think? Somewhere in the Middle East. I can't remember.
A: Easter was so early this year.

(Long pause as the two continue to pull candy from the shelves and I try to quickly find the Sweettarts, but to no avail).

B: How come Easter always moves like it does? I mean, how can they just pick when Jesus's birthday is? I wish I could just pick a day for my birthday.
A: I never thought about that. That's so right. I wish I could pick a day for my birthday. I'd always pick like Memorial Day or Labor Day, because then I'd have a three-day weekend for my birthday.
B: Yeah, that'd be nice. I guess you have to be the son of God to have your birthday move around like that.

(At this point imagine me in the aisle trying hard not to laugh and really wishing I could find the candy that I wanted).

B: Wait. If Easter is Jesus's birthday, then what's Christmas?
A: Oh yeah. Hmmm.

Just when I think the South is so clearly the Bible Belt, I hear something like that and realize that I know more atheists and agnostics that know more about Passover, Easter and religion in general than these two. Perhaps the Gospel was spread too thin by the time it got to them.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Christmas isn't Jesus's birhtday its a Roman holiday for one of their gods about giving that the church took over to push their religious agendas. Easter is based on a pagan holiday for the goddess eostre. Its commercializaton of Jesus and you all bought it!

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