How to have an egg-cellent atheist Easter

Easter can be a miserable time for atheists. If you’re sticking to your principles this year and valiantly resisting the siren call of Cadbury ovoids stuffed with caramel treats, there is little that is fun about Christianity’s most chocolatey holiday.

Fear not, comrades! Providing you’re willing to market your own festival, with the fuzzy exterior of the Easter bunny and the cold heart of a vicious profiteer, there’s no reason why you can’t have the whole country celebrating ‘RichardDawkinsIsABossmas’ within a century.

As any aspiring cult knows, the psychology of the average human is such that, on discovering any quasi-religious holiday that might bestow upon them time off work and/or an excuse to ritualistically gorge themselves, they will immediately desire to celebrate it, regardless of the religion, the meaning of the event, or their capacity to actually persuade anyone they’re really interested.

This can be as simple as a saint who has no business with candlelit dinners becoming the patron of badly rhymed love notes, but probably doesn’t exclude “No really, I am thoroughly committed to celebrating the octuplet birth of the Goat Gods to Mother Arachnia, Queen of the Spider People! Now pass me the commemorative chocolate goat foetuses.” Such is human nature.

It also helps if your new festival has no compunction with nicking the more delicious traditions of its predecessors. Have you ever wondered what the all-singing, all-dancing, all cheek-turning body of Christ has to do with chocolate eggs? Or rabbits, for that matter? Either we must assume that the Bible is wrong on some details and Our Saviour was actually crucified by bunnies on a massive egg, or we must admit that there’s something fishy here. Or eggy.

When planning your own festival, it’s worth remembering that in a line up of possible mascots, most people will opt for the adorable fluffy thing with ears over the torture victim hanging from a post, mostly because sending pictures of dead people to your friends and family is a
sure-fire way to get yourself taken off the Christmas invite list.

The success of a holiday is all about products, not substance. When I realised that Easter Lindt bunnies are the only thing that make excruciating family reunions bearable, I realised that if I believed in anything, it wasn’t God, His zombie son or even egg-laying rabbits. I, like most of humanity, believe in my incontrovertible right to masses and masses of food.

So there we have it: the Easter effect. Take one relatively enjoyable ritual, copy and paste it over a pagan festival we all celebrate anyway (midsummer is still free, if you’re interested), add generous layers of commercial profit potential, smother the entire affair in chocolate and you’re all set. Merry RichardDawkinsIsABossmass.