Hasenpfeffer is German for “hare-pepper,” or peppered hare, and is a famous game dish in Germany. Serve it with spätzle dumplings or with boiled or mashed potatoes and blaukraut (braised red cabbage). It always makes me think of easter.
It’s been a while since I posted anything regarding my beliefs. By and large I have really tried hard lately to be supportive and understanding of my fellow man’s need for intervention by a higher power. I don’t like it when that desire crashes headlong into my day, but I try not to get mad over it anymore. It’s a losing battle. That’s the way you start to think when you get older and (hopefully) wiser. Easter is a pseudo holiday that always draws my ire.
Normally I enjoy spring and fall the most as far as the seasons go. This year my two sons are as close to being grown as I could hope. I don’t dress them. I don’t bath them. They pretty much get themselves up and out the door for school. You get the idea. They always still take up a great deal of my daily thoughts. I wonder what we might have done right and what we might have done wrong. I also wonder what we can still do to help them with their burgeoning lives. I watch them and sometimes catch a glimmer of some thought in their eyes. Usually it’s when they are seeing something old again in a new light. Easter is one of those things I hope I got right.
I really feel that folks who celebrate Easter are, consciously or otherwise fostering the myth of Christianity in some measure. I also never felt the necessity to cram my children full of chocolate, or perpetuate some lore about a magical rodent that farts shiny colored eggs filled with happiness. I do feel it is a good idea to not restrict holiday fun for kids who have to go to school and listen to how everyone else had lots of fun on this “special” day. Doing this, like many other things in religion, breeds resentment. I still feel, with this in mind, that I need not support or endorse such silliness. That’s the way we raised our boys.
I hope my kids will feel the same way I do because critical thinking and logical debate is good for the mind. Remember, the lack of verifiable proof that something exists is not in and of itself evidence of any kind that supports its existence.
So, this Easter please ignore the dazzlingly unbelievable messages from your religious teachers and take this, my Easter message to you as an atheist: Morality is not something a god gives us. It is something that is inside us all as human beings. Love one another and share what you have with those less fortunate. Feed the hungry, care for the sick and above all else this Easter do as you please not as your told because you only live once.