GooglEaster

He is risen!  He is risen indeed!

For billions of people around the world who follow the Christian faith, Easter is the highest and most holy of holidays.  It is the core of the Christian faith – the assertion that the man Jesus of Nazareth was also proved to be the Son of God, not by his teaching or miracle working, but by the fact that he predicted (and fulfilled!) his suffering and death and most importantly, his resurrection from the dead.  

Not that you’d know any of this from Google.

The Google Doodle for today helpfully reminds me that it is Cesar Chavez’s birthday.  Google is apparently willing to acknowledge, doodly, only holidays where the religious implications are sufficiently removed from the observance.  So it is that St. Patrick’s day can be doodlized, but not Easter.  

Further, a glance at the headlines in Google News would never indicate that Easter was an important day in the United States.  There’s absolutely no mention of it there.  Only one mention of it in the headlines for world news.  Imagine all the ink that calendar companies will save because they will eventually not even need to acknowledge Easter as a holiday.  They’ve already saved money by omitting Good Friday most of the time.  

Again, this isn’t surprising given the tone and direction of cultural discourse.  It’s just amazing to see how quickly it happens.  So enjoy your observance of Cesar Chavez’s birthday.  

Even though he’s dead.  And Jesus isn’t.