School Insists “Easter Bunny” Be Renamed “Peter Rabbit”

And now we give you another inductee into The Moderate Voice’s prestigious Get A Life Club — this time giving an award to The Powers That Be at Tiverton Middle School in Tiverton, R.I:

A Rhode Island public school has decided the Easter bunny is too Christian and renamed him Peter Rabbit, and a state legislator is so hopping mad he has introduced an “Easter Bunny Act” to save the bunny’s good name.

“Like many Rhode Islanders I’m quite frustrated … by people trying to change traditions that we’ve held in this country for 150 years, like the Easter bunny,” Rhode Island State Rep. Richard Singleton told “Good Morning America Weekend Edition.”

The Get A Life Club Award is given to an individual, group or institution that reveals itself to need to get a deeper sense of perspective due to their obsession with P.C. or other small things blown way out of proportion. Other criteria may apply. But this is a slam-dunk induction:

The Easter bunny was scheduled to make an appearance at a craft fair on Saturday at Tiverton Middle School in Tiverton, R.I.

But the district’s schools Superintendent William Rearick told event organizers to change the bunny’s name to Peter Rabbit in “an attempt to be conscious of other people’s backgrounds and traditions.”

Singleton struck back this week by proposing a bill, nicknamed the “Easter Bunny Act,” to stop all local municipalities from changing the name of popular religious and secular symbols like the Easter bunny.

A personal note: With a name like “Gandelman” it’s clear I don’t celebrate Easter (although I do perform at Easter shows in my other incarnation). But when I was growing up, my teachers did mention “The Easter Bunny.” In school assemblies they’d sing “Jingle Bells” around Christmas time. My elementary school classrooms even had Christmas decorations (and a Chanuka menorah).

But the years passed and I never had to go into therapy due to that (for other things, yes…for that…no). I never robbed a bank because of that. I never felt any less my own heritage or of my own religion due to that. I didn’t feel persecuted, marginalized, singled out, apprehensive. I just shrugged and realized I didn’t celebrate those holidays but some did. End of emotional reaction.

In fact, you could argue that allowing someone like the Easter Bunny to go to a school without insisting he change his name is a form of religious tolerance.

For their implication that children could be traumatized for all their lives by having an Easter Bunny attend a school, we induct these otherwise-dedicated educators into The Moderate Voice’s Get A Life Club.

And for another reason: they have underscored for kids and adults that it isn’t only the Easter Bunny (or Easter Chicken?) who can lay an egg.