Easter is here again and it’s open season on bunnies. Actually it’s not, except in Australia, where it’s time for the great Easter rabbit hunt. Well it’s always great rabbit hunt time in Australia, but at Easter everyone wears colourful hats while blasting away at the fast-breeding rodents, who have no natural predators in the land Down Under.
Why can’t we have a proper Easter hunt? Why does it have to be about finding chocolate eggs? To my mind, arming eight year-olds with 12-gauges and letting them blast away is far more entertaining than watching them crawl around local parks looking for treats. Also, hunting small furry animals teaches them valuable life lessons, like, for instance, that double-ought buckshot is lethal at short range, but can really only wound someone at 40 yards.
However, if you feel that firearms are somehow ‘unCanadian’, then let’s arm those kiddies with clubs and do it the old-fashioned way (old-fashioned being the commonly accepted colloquial term for Neolithic). Really, it’s about time we got back to our hunter-gatherer roots—returning to our earthy origins is the perfect tonic for these modern times. That is, as long as I have an electric range to come home to, so I can cook up a little roast bunny . . . not to mention a plasma screen TV to watch the video replay of all the blood sport fun . . .
Okay, yes, I know, Easter is really a religious holiday and the whole bunny thing is just a side show to keep children busy while the rest of us drink Jack Daniels from a flask and try to stay awake through the requisite sermon on how Jesus died for our sins. (Helpful hint – don’t drink Jack through a straw.)
Personally, I think Jesus would be down with bringing a little more levity to the situation. “Yes, I’m dead, and you’re all pretty bummed, but go out and have some fun, revel in the fact that you’re still alive, and if you happen to have a significant other go breed like bunnies.”
Unlikely, you say? Perhaps (and yes, I realize I’ve just made the Catholic hit list) but I’ve never been a fan of the vengeful God theory or the massive guilt trip thing. Jesus seemed like a pretty live-and-let-live guy, so what’s with all the fire and brimstone undertaken in his name? I think he would have preferred that we drink, eat and be merry, as long as we didn’t impinge on anyone else’s eating, drinking and being merry and that we took some time to make sure others less fortunate were also able to take part in the eating, drinking and merry-making.
I’ll concede he probably wouldn’t be a big fan of hunting small animals with clubs. But I’d be willing to forgo the entertainment of mixing blood sport with childish innocence if it meant less sermonizing and images of Jesus being whipped by Roman legionnaires (now there were guys who put the blood into bloodsport), and more reveling in the joys of the world.
