If you call it a “spring egg,” you’ll hear from O’Reilly. (Photo by -sel)
Fox News‘ Bill O’Reilly (O’Reilly Factor, 3/21/13), claiming victory in the “War on Christmas,” declares that the new battle is the “War on Easter.”
If you watch the Factor, you know that we won the “War on Christmas” battle. A few years ago some American companies ordered their employees not to say “Merry Christmas.” Remember that? We presented the facts to you, you told the stores you wouldn’t buy there. The crazy edict was quickly rescinded. Power to the people.
But the war on Judeo-Christian tradition continues on in some public school districts. In 10 days it will be Easter Sunday. But in some schools you are not allowed to say the word “Easter.” On Long Island, the East Meadow School District holding a spring egg hunt. Not Easter eggs, spring eggs! The same thing in Prospect Heights, Illinois; Manhattan Beach, California; Flat Rock Elementary School in South Carolina; and a school district in New Cumberland, Pennsylvania. No Easter. They’re having spring egg events. Moderated by a spring bunny, at least in San Diego.
Now, the use of eggs and rabbits as symbols of spring and new life long predates Christianity. And the word “Easter” comes from the name of a pagan goddess whose festival was hijacked by early Christians who superimposed their own theological interpretation on it. So by insisting that eggs and bunnies be labeled “Easter,” you could say that O’Reilly is unknowingly demanding respect for the holiday’s true origins.
But of course, for O’Reilly, it’s just another battle in “the war on Judeo-Christian tradition.” It’s hard to see where the “Judeo” part comes in, though, in insisting that schools label their springtime celebrations “Easter”—which they avoid doing mainly so that parents who are Jewish or otherwise non-Christian won’t feel uncomfortable having their children take part.
O’Reilly doesn’t have much tolerance for such concerns. When a caller to his radio show (Radio Factor, 12/3/04; cited in Extra!, 5–6/05) complained about “Christmas going into the schools,” explaining that he’d grown up “with a resentment because I felt that people were trying to convert me to Christianity,” O’Reilly called such opinions “an affront to the majority” of what was “a predominantly Christian nation.” O’Reilly told the caller: “You have a federal holiday based on the philosopher Jesus. And you don’t wanna hear about it? Come on, if you are really offended, you gotta go to Israel, then.”
This is the same O’Reilly who asked—O’Reilly Factor, 2/26/04—why people were complaining about the antisemitism in Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ: “Is it because that the major media in Hollywood and a lot of the secular press is controlled by Jewish people?” It’s good to keep in mind this spin that the “No-Spin Zone” puts on the word “secular” when you hear O’Reilly’s theory about why schools are going for the “spring bunny”:
I know it’s stupid. You know it’s stupid. But it’s happening and there is a reason why it’s happening.
Secular Progressives are running wild with President Obama and the White House. They feel unchained, liberated and they are trying to diminish any form of religion. The goal is to marginalize religious opposition to secular programs.
In Scandinavia there are laws that say you cannot criticize minorities and if you do, you could be arrested. Secular Progressives want laws like that here.
Yes, in Bill O’Reilly’s conspiracy theory, Barack Obama’s election has emboldened “Secular Progressives” to ban the Easter Bunny because he stands in the way of jailing people who “criticize minorities” (perhaps for feeling “unchained, liberated”). You know, like they do in “totally secular” Scandinavia—where most of the countries still have established state religions.
It’s tempting to label O’Reilly “psychotic”
But he knows precisely what he’s doing, doesn’t he?
His audience, on the other hand …
I had a conversation a while back with a guy who was utterly convinced that Dear Misleader was the head of The Great Muslim Conspiracy ™, and that the gummint had spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build mosques around the world.
Must be why he’s killing them around the world.
It’s a brilliant cover, you see.
Now, this person most likely believes the whole Secular Progressive Conspiracy ™ thingie as well, again with Obama in the lead.
That would seem blatantly contradictory … the secret Muslim jihadist pushing for an end to religion in public life.
But the thing is, if Christianity is castrated here, it will be that much easier for Islam to triumph.
So it all makes perfect sense
If you’re off your Thorazine regimen.
What else can we expect from morons who think rabbits shit eggs.
Give to the Pagans what belongs to the Pagans. Let them have their Easter Goddess, eggs, and bunnies. True Christians should never have been participating in those rituals anyway. So let them have ‘Easter’, but don’t try to take away Resurection Sunday. Those wanting to hurt Christians are actually helping to bring them back to the real reason for celebration! He is risen, indeed!
So let them have ‘Easter’, but don’t try to take away Resurection Sunday.-Sharon
A) if it’s that important to you, then you might want to learn how to spell it.
B) You can have your RR-sunday, just stop showing it up our backside and
C) while we are at it, can we get you to get your grubby little mitts off our Winter Solstice Holiday (BTW – The Celebration is actually about the solstice not burdening oneself to death to make corporations rich), and
d) Our Fall Holiday Solstice that you F!cked up trying to turn our children into Corporate Shills with every but the reality, and making them Fat with poor, manufactured globs of chemical that only resemble food, and last,
E) can we go back to have The Actual new year start on the New Year, instead you F!cking fools (that’s a hint) laughing at us, and pretending the it starts in the middle of winter, which now that I think of it, since you blood bastards also stole our 12th Night which the celebration of the middle of winter (Hint, there is a reason that January was named after the God Janus, with two faces, one looking forward and one looking back……
In fact, why don’t you grubby little buggerer’s get your thieving mitts off all of our holidays that you stole and perverted to match to your egotistical, Insane and petty God that your created in your Image, and get your own.
haysus Xristo de madre. – we told em never trust a pile of idiots that nails their god to a tree, and consume Mushrooms.
Jesus was a mushroom – Uh huh.
Jesus Was a mushroom Uh- Huh
This must have been a mind-bending moment for many viewers. Ancient texts scholar and The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross author John Allegro informs the public know that, Jesus was, in fact, a mushroom. Why don’t I learn facts like this from television today?
Hmmm . . . War on Christmass. Sounds sorta like War on Terror. Of course, that was a war ON terror. O’Reilley waged and won a war ON Christmas? Maybe he meant to say that he won the war on the War on Christmas. But then again, you never know . . . Maybe he did wage a war on Christmas and is now waging a war on Easter.
“So by insisting that eggs and bunnies be labeled “Easter,” you could say that O’Reilly is unknowingly demanding respect for the holiday’s true origins.”
You “could” say that, but that would be as stupid as the exaggerations Bill O makes. He’s saying no such thing and this POV isn’t helpful or Fair or Accurate.
As a pagan I am tired of my holidays like Easter being appropriated by a an anti-nature religion like Christianity that claims it and only it is true and real.
All hail Sucellus (and tip back a stout in his honor), Nantosuelta, Abnoba, and Cernunnos! That includes you, Mr. O’Reilly.
You have now reestablished that O’Reilly is crazy; we all knew that.
I take issue with the statement that early Christians “highjacked” Easter and then “superimposed” their own “theological interpretation” on it. In the NT we are told that it was during this time Christ was crucified and was resurrected. This is not a theological interpretation. This is a cornerstone of Christianity. I understand many Jewish and and non Christians might feel uncomfortable with this but no one is forcing them to take part. Last Christmas a forty foot menorah was placed on the White House lawn, but no Christian symbols were allowed. What kind of spin would Mr. Naureckas care to put on that?
This is a bit much, honestly. I was raised Jewish in a predominantly Christian town. People respected my right to worship, or say, anything I liked regarding my holidays. I really did not care if there was an Easter bunny personally. The one thing I would say is that a little “multicultural” (that dreaded word) education would be nice for kids. When you talk about easter, then have a conversation about Passover, and other people’s spring holidays too.
But if you are raising your kids to be so sensitive they can’t handle the word Easter I’m sorry but they are going to really be in for a rude awakening when they have to handle much of the rest of life in the United States…
This guy is such an embarassment to the people of Irish background like myself. What a narrow minded bigot he is.
A 40-foot menorah on the White House lawn? That is a total fabrication? If there had been any such thing, it would have been all over the newspapers, TV, magazines, and most of all the internet.
That is nuts. If you can prove otherwise, show us the photos. This is pure dementia.
Isnt this just a little bit too twee? Now I hate bill o’reily , and im sure I disagree with everything hes ever said but,like it or not, Easter has been a Christian holiday for a couple thousand years the Saxon Goddess whos holiday its supposed it once was (no one really knows for sure even though there are written records from the 4th and 5th centuries-Britain) , gave it up a long long time ago.This “argument” sounds like my son when he was twelve years old or so.- “I don’t have to go to church with gramma because it was really the pagan festival of human sacrifice anyway “-….why not just focus on what a hateful mean spirited bastard oreily is??
“” This “argument” sounds like my son when he was twelve years old or so.- “I don’t have to go to church with gramma because it was really the pagan festival of human sacrifice anyway ” “” … hmmm … sounds like your son has a brain… maybe got it from his mother? // ” So let them have ‘Easter’, but don’t try to take away Resurection Sunday. Those wanting to hurt Christians are actually helping to bring them back to the real reason for celebration! He is risen, indeed!” ?? exactly WHAT is this babble supposed to actually MEAN? I would advise seeing a qualified psychiatrist as soon as possible. // Padremellyrn… I think I hear some ‘christian’ brains exploding… please don’t do that! :^)) // I read Allegro shortly after the book first came out.. might even still have it kicking around … // ‘Christ’ said … ‘eat my body’ … hmmm… sounds… kinky! … and … I think I’m qualified to attest to just how ‘spiritual’ that experience can be… we have a LOT of fairy rings here in Vancouver… those little psylocibin ones… the big red ones (like in Alice in Wonderland). However, I must have missed something, as I never felt compelled afterward, then or now, to wear a ridiculous big hat and carry a shepards crook… obviously I’m a failure as a nut job (or a psycohopathic pedophile)
I wonder if we will ever have the courage to write about the right wing fundamentalist war on science and sensibility…
First stop call it “conspiracy THEORY” since a theory has been supported by the facts. These are just ideas at best, propaganda at worse.
Yes part of the mandate of Christians is that they will be persecuted. In some places they are, in others they are the prosecutors.
Frank, where did that story come from? A “40 ft Menorah on the White House lawn” would not be ignored. Someone would have noticed. Are you sure it wasn’t a state capital, or a parallel world?
I apologize Frank you are right. And I would not allow such things on public property. But then the State/Church separation has been eroding for some time. Pres. Obama has kept what was done before him and maybe has expanded the intrusion.
President Jimmy Carter lights a menorah in 1979 in Lafayette Park, across the street from the North Portico of the White House.
Jimmy Carter started it across the street but now look at it.
“28 years later a 30′ tall eyesore appears on the White House lawn each Chanukah. But such brazen displays of influence are not at all limited to Washington D.C.”
Bill has talked about the war on christianity and its sometimes all too obtuse detractors.He may be right .He may be wrong.He is right ,and has given many examples of people(Bill from mars)mocking christian without any ‘co-mocking” of muslims.Gosh I wonder why?Either way fair……You really are scraping the bottom of the barrel here.This is so unimportant.He talks every day on the factor.Some is damn important ,some is fluff.You only have so much space.Why does it always seem to be fluff you are trying to get the libs riled up over?