Hot cross bunnies

Hot Cross Buns have been in the shops since January. Early January. I think I first saw them on the 6th and was almost tempted to blog that "Oh my god, it's only the sixth of January and already they're putting hot cross buns in the shops" but then I thought, well, how much of a cliché would it be to write something like that. Besides, we've been scoffing them down on a regular basis since the 7th of January, so I really have nothing to complain about (except the fruitless kind. I mean, why bother?). Yes, scoffity scoff scoff scoff has been one of the more commonly occuring sounds here at chez hotcrossbunny us. I wonder how many kilos of butter we've gone through just in our HCB consumption. I bet it's at least up there around the 1 mark. Who knows really. I don't have time to waste figuring out that sort of thing. I mean it's easter sunday now and I'm only just getting around to writing about the whole easter thing, and I'd probably need some kind of very specialised scales for that type of guessing anyway, so let me just reiterate that we've been eating a shitload of easter buns (with butter). All this is a bit of a lead into a natter on easter, vis a vis, my thoughts on said religious festival and what not. Of course we all know that Easter was a pagan festival; yet another one that the Christians appropriated to push their brand. The big ones like Xmas and easter have a few leftover symbols from their pagan roots. At Xmas, it's the bedazzled tree limb and at easter it's the bunny. That's right, the bunny is a sign of new life, which coincided with spring in the northern hemisphere. Let's face it, those rabbits do a pretty good job at creating new life, as Thomas Austin found out pretty sharpish when, in 1859, he thought he'd buy some of the little varmints from a mail order catalogue and have them shipped out to regional Victoria. Now I was unlucky enough to have been exposed in a fairly guilt-trippy kind of way to many of the rites and rongs of the Catholic church (and my, what a catholic education that was). We learned all the stories about Jesus doing cool stuff with water, bread and fish and well, other things. He couldn't do any miracles when it really could have helped him though, could he? Like turning ropes into toilet paper, nails into blu-tack or a crucifix into a nice combination deck chair/beach umbrella. No, he was nailed up and killed. Catholics love this fact and they're willing, at the drop of a hat, to tell you that Christ died for my sins. I used to think as a kid "shit, he died just cos I threw a 2 cent piece at my sister and hit her in the forehead? Bummer," because those are the things you think of when you're 8. But he came back to fucking life again! It's false advertising. You can't say he died and then say that three days later he's rolling back big stone tomb walls. They just want to have their cake and eat it too. It's like putting up pictures of starving children and asking for donations, when the children are really attending inner-city private schools and eating at restaurants twice a week. If he died for my sins, I can't have done anything that bad, because he only stayed dead for a few days! Thanks Jesus, we're all off the hook now.