Do you know what I’ve discovered? Easter bunnies take their lives really seriously and the competition among them to be the Queen Pooh-Bah of Bunnies on Easter is something else. You’d never know that Easter was supposed to be the celebration about the death and resurrection of the son of the Christian God who came to redeem us from horrendous choices (both ours and others) and teach us how to live on Earth together in love, peace, and joy both here and beyond. To hear the bunnies talk, Easter is ALL about them, the colorful eggs, and the baskets filled with chocolate Cadbury candy. I caught wind of this fierce competition recently when the Miss Easter Bunny Pageant of 2012 was held in a copycat Beatrix Potter world up in a small town in New Hampshire like the Hill Top Farm in the village of Sawrey, Cumbria, Lake District that Ms. Potter loved so much.
“Friends” Pinterest image
I went “undercover” as Big Mama for my “Big Mama Speaks” column this week to participate as the Master of Ceremonies of the anthropomorphic bunnies and “bunny wannabe’s” who were competing for the title of Miss Easter Bunny 2012. Below is a segment of the question and answer session for some of the lucky finalists.
BIG MAMA: “Our first contestant is Black Bunny Rollin’ from the Southside of Chicago. I ain’t gonna’ lie—glad to see one of my ‘peeps’ trying for the gold ring. Ms. Rollin’, since the Trayvon Martin murder, our country has been on edge racially. 56% of Whites think we should move on to other subjects and drop this distasteful matter, while 90% of Black people think we should hold the Sanford police department’s feet to the fire until justice is done. How would you use your Easter Bunny title to heal race relations amongst the citizens of Sanford and foster brotherhood and love throughout the nation?”
Bunny Wallpaper/Google Image
BLACK BUNNY ROLLIN’: “Hey, Big Mama. How YOU doin’? I am so glad you asked me that very sensitive and important question because I’ve been thinkin’ about this very thing for a long, long time. I would flood the land with Easter baskets filled with hollow chocolate bunnies and “marsmellowey Peeps” to show that we are all one and the same under the skin or coating, as it may be, so why don’t we just ‘chill’ and follow the great Rodney King and ‘just all get along!’”
(AUDIBLE GROWN IS HEARD FROM THE BUNNY AUDIENCE)
BIG MAMA: “Thank you Black Bunny. Sounds like your answer to our racial problems is ‘get high on sugar and die.’ Obviously, we haven’t read the latest report on sugar, now have we? Um-humph! Anyhooooo. . . our second contestant is Bunny “Going Rogue” Palin. Ms. Palin, your name sounds vaguely familiar and really scary; in fact, I’m getting eye tics just saying it out loud. Have you ever run for office? No? Okay, I could have sworn, I’d met you before. Ms. Palin, the NRA lobbyists have gotten completely out-of-hand. What are your views on gun control? What would you do to reign in this growing scourge in our country? Guns are flooding our schools, homes, and streets, and we are gunning each other down like clay pigeons and without so much as a “by your leave!’”
Courtesy of www.angrybunnycomic.com
BUNNY “GOING ROGUE” PALIN: “What the hell is that, a gotcha question? I support our constitutional right to bear arms, and if you’ve got ‘em—flaunt ‘em, if you don’t—‘tote a Colt,’ or maybe you are a sucker and have been brainwashed by the lame-stream media. At the very least, I’d flood everybody’s Easter basket with chocolate toy guns and bullets from the cradle to the grave that sport the inscription: Viva la Second Amendment! And then I’d pass out NRA stickers with the lock and load insignia for their Easter Baskets. Yeah, Baby—‘cause that’s how we roll in Alaska!”
(ONLY CRICKETS CAN BE HEARD FROM THE OUTSIDE. NO SOUND COMES FROM THE HORRIFIED BUNNY AUDIENCE BECAUSE THEY CAN HARDLY BREATHE WONDERING WHICH BURROW IN HELL THIS BUNNY CAME FROM.)
BIG MAMA: “Ooooh-kay. . .! Thank you Ms. Palin. Let’s move on to the next contestant. Ms. Norma “Nutria” Bunny. Ah, Norma, I don’t mean to be rude, but you look awfully big for a bunny. Where did you say you were from?”
NORMA BUNNY: (BUNNY VOICE EXTREMELY HIGH-PITCHED EVEN FOR A FEMALE BUNNY) “I’m from around these parts. What’s it to you? Toss me one of them contestant questions so we can get this over with, Big Mama—I ain’t got all day.”
BIG MAMA: (clears throat, trying not to show how close she is to opening up a can of “whup ass” on the obnoxious bunny) “The human recipients of your Easter joy are stressed to the max. They will need to know that you have a sense of humor. The March jobs report just came out and it is below expectations. What is an example of some of the things you’d do to help cheer up the jobless and lighten their spirits?”
NORMA BUNNY: (BUNNY VOICE EVEN HIGHER THAN BEFORE) “Why, I’d use my girlish bunny charms and my beguiling ways and “make ‘em laugh. I’ve got tons of jokes like this one:
Two chocolate bunnies walk into a barn. One has a hole in his ass and the other has no ears.
What do they say to each other?”
(AN ANGRY COMMOTION IS HEARD IN THE AUDITORIUM AS AN AUDIENCE MEMBER SCREAMS OUT: “That’s no female bunny, that is ‘NORMAN Nutria’ from Louisiana—the river rat that attacked the woman in Wal-Mart a couple of years ago. He/she’s an imposter and she’s wanted by the PO-lease!”)
My concept of Norman Nutria (a.k.a “Norma Bunny,” a.k.a. Myocastor coypus)||Google Image
WANTED BY THE FBI
Louisiana woman sues Wal-Mart over incident with “Norman the nutria”||May 7, 2009||LA Times
(AS THE COMMOTION REACHES FEVER PITCH, BUNNY SECURITY CAPTURES “NORMAN” NUTRIA AND BIG MAMA RESTORES CALM TO THE AUDIENCE WITH NO ONE THE WORST FOR WEAR.)
BIG MAMA: “My goodness gracious. Lord, have mercy—you just never know what’s gonna’ happen in a day. Calm down everybody. No one got hurt, thank God, so let’s do our best to carry on. We only have one more contestant and then we’ll choose a winner. Now where were we? Our next contestant is Dr. Henrietta Beatrix Bunny. Welcome Dr. Bunny. I understand that you are a history professor at Beatrix Potter University. A lot of humans are interested in the history of how the bunny, the basket, the boiled eggs, the Cadburys, and the jelly beans supplanted the death and resurrection of the Lord?”
***
Pinned by milkbeforebed.tumblr.com
DR. HENRIETTA BEATRIX POTTER: “I’m-so-happy-you-asked-me-that-question-because-it-is-really-quite-the-story-since-history-is-always-quite-the-story-is-it-not? (GULP) Well-you-see-the-Christians-stole-all-the-pagan-rituals-and-tied-them-into-their-new-celebrations-and-Easter-is-no-exception. (GULP) Greg-Jenner-has-written-a-marvelous-article-(I-tell-you-just-marvelous)-entitled-‘Easter:-what’s-with-all-the-bunnies-and-stuff?’-and-he-says- that- the-word-Easter-came-from-the-word-‘Eostre-who- was-a-pagan-goddess-in-the-Saxon-religion. (GULP) In-fact-almost-everything-we-do-or-have-done-emerged-from-the-pagans-and-we-either-modified-it-to-fit-the-biblical-characters-or-we-outgrew-it. (GULP) Why-Mr.-Jenner-tells-the-most-delightful-story-about-how-Christian-farmers-used-to-bless-their-lands-to-make-them-fertile. (GULP) They-would-go-out-and-follow-these-pagan-instructions-to-the-letter-of-the-law:
‘1) At night, dig up four clumps of soil from the four corners of the field
2) Then take a sample of every grass, herb, tree in the field, and add it to milk from every cow, and honey from every bee hive.
3) Now add holy water to this concoction, and drip it in the holes…
4) Now sing an incantation, asking them to grow.
5) Now sing the Lord’s Prayer, several times
6) Now take the four clumps of earth into the church, and get your local priest to sing four masses… one for each clump
7) Now get four crucifixes and write Matthew, Mark, Luke and John on them. Place the crucifixes in the holes you have dug, and shout ‘Grow!’ nine times
8) Now sing the Lord’s Prayer nine times
9) Now turn east, bow and say a prayer
10) Now turn around clockwise three times, and then lie prostrate on the ground while chanting about your lovely green fields
11) Now bless the plough and bless the seed
12) Now plough a furrow, and place a cake of honey and milk in it.
13) Well done, you now have a fertile field!’
WHEW-isn’t-that-so-silly! (GULP) Now-back-to-bunnies-eggs-and-Easter-which-came-to-us-via-the-Germans in the 17th Century. . . .”*
***
I am discovering that one must never give a professorial bunny an open mic! Anyway, a very beautiful bunny won (Miss Honey-pot Bunny) that was a mixture of all the bunny races and became the proud Easter Bunny of 2012. But since none of the answers of the bunnies were satisfactory to nourish the spirit and soul of humans, Miss Honey-pot’s Easter duties only encompassed satisfying the taste buds and the body. IMP. NOTE: “Norma” Nutria escaped from the Bunny security and is still on the lam.
Prize Rabbit/Google Image
I am discovering that bunnies, boiled eggs, and Easter candy (I do so love me some jelly beans) can only feed the body, but the rejection, the loneliness, the fear, the cruelty, the injustice, and the pain and horror of living on this Earth can only be overcome by the touch of a god who has the ability to feed my soul and inhabit my spirit so that I will not retaliate and become the evil that assails me. I don’t understand everything about my Lord’s death and resurrection, but nobody has come back to tell me what is really on the other side (I don’t believe that little boy who claims he saw Heaven for a “hot chocolate minute”—he’s a mimic of his religious parents—no more no less), so I could be wrong about so many things which is why I respect other religions and would never, ever lead a crusade. But until the newly departed atheist author, Christopher Hitchens (“Hitch”), comes back and says, “nanny-nanny-boo-boo, I was right—there is nothing beyond the veil,” and Carl Sagan tags along to confirm it, I’ll stake my claim on the resurrection and keep aiming for an abundant life on this rock and beyond. To that end, the Easter Bunny will stay in its place of “cuteness” along with Santa, and I’ll go and join in on Handel’s Messiah with the rest of the imperfect Christians on Easter as I humbly sing, “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will take His stand on the Earth.”
Happy Easter and a glorious Passover (“Chag Pesach Sameach”)!
Ruben’s Resurrection of Christ
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http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/greg-jenner/easter-whats-with-all-the-bunnies_b_1406355.html
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