As my family prepares to celebrate Easter 2015, I feel overwhelmed by the changes the holiday has undergone in both religious and secular terms.

Perhaps it’s the haze of passing years that prejudices me, but it seems that the holiday has declined greatly in innocence and reverence since the days I was hugging my stuffed bunny and fighting my cousins for festive eggs in Granny Tyree’s front yard.

The White House Easter Egg Roll has devolved into the poor man’s version of “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” (“I got a chocolate egg.” “I got a strawberry egg.” “I got a lemon egg.” “I got tire tracks from the Secret Service Agent’s runaway car.”)

Innocent children’s songs about hippity-hop rabbits are on the verge of being shanghaied by hip-hop artists. (I understand good ol’ Peter is about to forget the bunny trail and instead get the spotlight in “I like big cottontails and I cannot lie…”)

Remember when the important question was who got to bite the ears off the chocolate bunny, not who got to behead the chocolate bunny if it was found in a car with a male other than a family member?

Casual Friday at work has segued right into casual Sunday. Fewer and fewer people care about looking spiffy for Easter. Instead of an Easter bonnet with all the frills upon it, we have a parade of Easter butt-cracks with all the frills upon them.

Cable channels have done way too many historical expose documentaries riding the coattails of Easter. What will we hear next, “Judas Kiss Or Judas Lap Dance: You Be The Judge”?

If da Vinci were painting today, his masterpiece would probably contain product placement and be called “The Last Supper Before Next Exit.”

Facebook has shot down its “Feeling Fat�� status, but I hear that “Feeling Crucified” is still in the wings.

Remember when sunrise services could be conducted without side issues such as carbon footprints? (“Sunrise services: where we’re reminded that solar panels are the reason for the season. Don’t forget your ‘God loves windmills this much’ poster.”)

I understand the next “Fast and Furious” movie will be filmed in the church parking lot immediately after Easter services. (“See ya at Christmas!”)

It used to be so much simpler to deal with resurrection skeptics at Easter. Now proselytizing gets met with “So Jesus really gave up a man cave like that? You are pulling my leg!”

It used to be so comforting to think that Jesus Christ came to save everyone. Due to recent “private server” developments at the State Department, Scripture is being rewritten to say, “Everyone can be saved — except the people my staff has looked over and decided aren’t worth saving.”

Remember when “coming out” meant emerging from the tomb, not coming out to your parishioners? (“Since there’s not a single feline mentioned in the Bible, you’ve probably wondered why I’ve had the choir director do all those show tunes from ‘Cats’…”)

I am cautiously optimistic about NBC’s Easter presentation of the early-church drama “A.D.” — but I fear that its inspiring moments will soon be negated by a documentary with a promo that blares, “Pontius Pilate washed his hands of the whole matter — or did he? Hidden-camera footage shows Pilate not washing up before sending Christ to his death, or before going to his second-shift job flipping burgers.”

 

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at tyreetyrades@aol.com and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.” Danny’s’ weekly column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons Inc. newspaper syndicate.