A rabbit is sent to stand before the lord God almighty.
“So here’s the thing,” God says. “Above all species you and your kind are known for fertility. Hell, ‘fucking like bunnies’ has become a friggin’ cliché.”
“Okay,” says the rabbit, not sure what’s going down.
“Well,” says the creator of the universe, “we have sort of a P.R. problem here. This time of year is supposed to be about the resurrection of my son—which is really only me in another form—and how he sacrificed himself to save the world from the eternal judgment I doled out in the first place…just go with it; it’s complicated…but the calendars got all F’d up and somehow it turns out that his martyrdom coincides exactly with previously-existing dates of Pagan fertility rites.”
“ I see,” said the rabbit, not seeing at all.
“Anyway, we’re going to call this thing Easter, and as a means of appeasing centuries of legend that came before our own, we thought it might be cool to have an Easter, you know…bunny.”
“I don’t get it. What do I have to do with Judaism?”
“Mmn, actually the overthrow of Judaism. But let’s not split hares. Get it?”
The rabbit rolled its slick, pink eyes. “Yes, I got it.”
“Just kinda kicking it around the office so far…but we’re thinking, what if a rabbit became the symbol of my only begotten son’s death and resurrection. Cause then you could have that old school fertility thing but whitewashed into something that would play with the tenets of the New Testament.”
“Not sure people would get the whole fertility thing,” the rabbit said.
“I don’t think so either,” said God. “Evangelicals are not big on allegory. Sure, they see Christ’s parables as such, but they don’t allow themselves to see anything else in the bible as anything other than literal, word-for-word absolute truth. They think the bible was written for the lowest common denominator so any standard literary conceit is fucking lost on them. So we’re going to have to hit them over the head with symbolism in the densest possible fashion in order to get them to see the whole fertility angle.”
“How’s that going to work?” asked the rabbit.
“We’re going to have you deliver eggs.”
“Come again?”
“You’ll be the Easter bunny. You’ll go around putting eggs in people’s houses, as a reminder of the Maypole dance and all the other fertility rituals, but at the same time be a symbol for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
“Isn’t this trying to have your cake and eat it, too?” asked the rabbit.
“Look,” said the lord God Jehovah. “We’re not stupid. We’re going to hedge things in our favor.”
“How’s that?” the bunny asked.
“You’re getting an image makeover. Less Druid, more Republican-friendly. From now on you’re going to be called Peter Cottontail. You know, as in the apostle Peter. The first pope.”
“Or the slang term for phallus, depending.”
“Now you’re just being insolent!” God thundered. “You have no proof that bit of history originated before my story!”
“Actually, it’s pretty well documented,” said the rabbit. “But for the sake of argument, we’ll pretend it’s not and simply agree to disagree. We’ll just pretend it’s an unsolvable mystery. You know, which came first, the Christian or the egg?”
“So we want you, like Santa Claus, to travel the world in a single night and hit every household and give them eggs.”
“Okay, Santa brings Playstation 3’s and gobs of cash. The same kids are going to be placated by some hardboiled eggs?”
“Well, there’s candy, too.”
“What if they’re diabetic?”
“Look, we just need you to do this.”
The rabbit thought for a moment. “You know, I am reminded of the words of Christ crucified, the ones that never made it into the bible.”
“And what quote is that?” asked God.
"The thing he said, nailed to a cross, right before someone stabbed him in the side with a spear."
"Refresh my memory," said God.
"Just before he was forced to drink vinegar while blood was pouring out of his wrists, right before he had a crown of thorns driven into his head."
"What, what did he say?" asked God.
“This is a hell of a way to spend Easter.”
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