# How come Jesus can be reincarnated but there's no Easter Bunny or Santa Clause? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 16, 2017, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-jesus-can-be-reincarnated-but-theres-no-easter-bunny-or-santa-clause/784590 "2017-04-16T22:47:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Panic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/don_t_panic/32/398_2.png) [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-jesus-can-be-reincarnated-but-theres-no-easter-bunny-or-santa-clause/784590/41 "2017-04-18T18:08:42Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > Santa and the Easter Bunny are secular characters created for kids. Santa is pretty kid-friendly, but this whole business with the Easter Bunny is basically pornography. He’s all about fertility. Think about it: He shows up in spring, when new life blossoms after the dreary winter. He’s a rabbit, a species known primarily for their practice of constant shagging and baby-making. And he’s always running around carrying eggs, another symbol of new life and procreation. I think we should censor the Easter Bunny on moral grounds. I bet he’s directly responsible for any amount of teen pregnancy. Won’t someone think of the children? ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-jesus-can-be-reincarnated-but-theres-no-easter-bunny-or-santa-clause/784590/42 "2017-04-18T18:34:19Z")
> [@Leaper](#): > > This is a question that gets wrestled with at times in fantasy and horror fiction. > > Suppose you found out that, say, werewolves as presented in lore and pop culture were 100% real. What, if anything, does that say about the existence of vampires? Ghosts? Aliens visiting Earth? The objective truth of any religion? If you find out one “impossible/supernatural” thing is true, how far does the door open to ANYTHING impossible/supernatural? Right. Like the way in True Blood, Underworld, Vampire Diaries and Twilight there are vampires and werewolves, and maybe a few other creatures like witches, but The Mummy is nowhere to be found. The other thing is that when you do open the door to every possible creature, now it begs the question of how the heck do all these things stay hidden? A handful of vampires living in an old mansion can hide. An underground society of vampires having a secret war with werewolves that occasionally gets sidetracked by pyrotechnic battles with dragons, demons, elves, wraiths, ghosts, banshees, banhes (or manshee…whatever the male version is called), witches, warlocks, kraken, Rodan, and Mechagodzilla is a bit harder to keep out of the public eye. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-jesus-can-be-reincarnated-but-theres-no-easter-bunny-or-santa-clause/784590/43 "2017-04-18T21:44:24Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Because Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny were intentionally made up. The only people that were ever told they were real were children. And because they both are said to do certain things, which are provably done by someone else. > > It’s not that it’s impossible for them to exist. I mean, yes, what we know about science shows they don’t exist. But that’s not why people found out they don’t exist. They found out because their parents told them they were the ones doing all those things. Or they saw them do it, or at least evidence that they did it. > > If the Jesus story had come explicitly from people making up stories, then those who follow him would consider him fake, too. But the Gospels describe him as a historical figure. The problem is that the Gospels themselves are not authentic. Mark is held to be the earliest one, written around 70 CE. It is not contemporary and contains nothing that can be verified as factual concerning the life of Jesus. ---
**Author:** ![Grestarian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grestarian/32/3227_2.png) [@Grestarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grestarian)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2017, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-jesus-can-be-reincarnated-but-theres-no-easter-bunny-or-santa-clause/784590/44 "2017-04-20T03:37:26Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > I don’t understand the connection that the OP is trying to make. > > Christmas and Easter are Christian holidays. > > Santa and the Easter Bunny are secular characters created for kids. They give kids and young-at-heart adults a light hearted connection to the holiday. > > We always took our family to Easter Services and had a Easter egg hunt afterwards. Giving our kids the religious and secular experience. > > Same thing for Christmas. We attended early morning service and opened presents afterwards. Actually, its rather a different mix: Christmas is (duh) a Christian holiday. It celebrates the birth of Christ, which scholars calculated to be around mid-July by modern calendar equivalents, but was moved to late December to co-opt existing pagan celebrations of the winter solstice such as Yule. The giving of gifts (particularly in the form of food) in the dead of winter is a basic community food-sharing practice that helped tribes/clans/communities/etc. survive. Although sainted for following (reviving) such a practice in honor of Christ\*, Nicholas was nevertheless perpetuating a pagan tradition. Easter (Oester?) was a pagan holiday celebrating the vernal equinox – the clearest indication of the return of the sun (No, it’s not just fading out forever; it’s coming back, see?). Bunnies, eggs, flowers, grass, and bright pastoral colors are more symbols of the practice which have persisted throughout the millenia. Passover is a Jewish observance which also predates Christ. [q.v. Torah/Old Testament/Pentateuch(sp?) and the whole Exodus/Ten Commandments thing.] There’s no small coincidence that Christians commemorate the crucifixion and resurrection of their figurehead right around the same time: It supplants the preceding cultures’ celebrations. According to the religious cultures that are dominant in the Western hemisphere (e.g. Christianity and its many splinters), Christ is to be regarded as real while persistent symbols of other religions are to be considered foolish. The Tooth Fairy… Umm…I dunno! Cecil? –G! \*It is interesting to note that, in many of the cultures that were colonized by Christian (Spanish & Portuguese) missionaries [i.e. Latin America] the stories are conflated and it’s the baby Jesus who flies around the world to deliver presents… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-jesus-can-be-reincarnated-but-theres-no-easter-bunny-or-santa-clause/784590.md?page=2)