Why does TV hate Easter?

For at least a month yearly TV blasts one thing into our heads: Christmas, Christmas, Christmas. Sit-coms and dramas alike go to extreme lengths to play up the holiday cheer. Major networks cut out special prime-time hours to play perennial Christmas specials that are so old my parents my parents can't remember when they first aired.

But when the most important Christian Holiday rolls around in early spring there’s barely a mention of Easter, except maybe the occasional reference to a creepy guy at the mall in a bunny suit. After frantically searching for Easter-related episodes for weeks on our seasonally-themed TV blog, HolidaySPECIAL, the offerings were paltry.

There were only a few. In 21 years on the air, The Simpsons mentions Easter on two occasions that I can find. The first is in the season 10’s Simpsons Bible Stories episode, when the family is sleeping through a particularly boring Easter sermon (In fact the only hint we have here that its an Easter sermon is that Homer put a chocolate rabbit on the offering plate). Then in Season 20 the show’s opening season tackles an Easter egg hunt, ending with Homer taking revenge on a rabbit-dressed man. This is about as good as it gets for Easter, even from the Simpsons, which last year devoted an entire episode the country of Israel.

This year I couldn’t find a single Easter-themed show airing during the weeks leading up to Easter. Only the traditional "Ten Commandments" film, which has nothing to do with Easter, is airing on ABC the day before the holiday.

So why is it so hard for TV to do Easter? After all, it is the most important holiday on the Christian calendar. While the Christmas birth was a miracle, the Crucifixion and Easter made Jesus a Savior and deity.

Is it the advertising bonanza that Christmas provides? Easter helps sell candy and plastic baskets, but little else. Department stores, electronics retailers and internet shopping sites make a dramatic advertising blitz at Christmas. Many retailers do 20-30 percent of their entire business around the holiday. Average people, Christian and non-Christian both, send out holiday cards by the stack, take lengthy vacations, exchange gifts and prop up a holiday mythos that has more to do with pagan winter rituals than the birth of anyone. There’s money behind Christmas and Easter simply hasn’t cashed in.

Maybe Easter is simply too reverent. Holy Week commemorates a deeply religious time for most Christians, when a young Jewish religious figure turned himself into the literal Savior of the world.

Perhaps the Crucifixion, marked the Friday before Easter, is too bloody, too gruesome. Unlike the deeds around Christmas, there were no wise men, no hopeful shepherds. Instead there were cowardly government officials, demeaning soldiers and an entire mob that gathered to personally witness one of the cruelest and most humiliating formers of capital punishment the world has ever known. Or is it the New Testament account of Jesus rising from the dead on the third day after his death. Perhaps for Christians, its just too dangerous to tinker with such a holy occasion.

With Christmas, TV has a rich history and tradition to draw from. There are takes on caroling, gift giving, Santa Claus, Christmas “spirit,” snow and even manger scenes. All can be massaged, twisted and lampooned into a familiar, yet entertaining 22 or 44 minute segment

But for TV, there are dozens of ways to note the holiday without stepping into sacrilege.

Take the existing examples, there’s the Peanuts with their egg coloring antics. South Park has done its irreverent best to rip apart the holiday, although blasphemy is a goal with the show.

One of the few shining examples of a true Easter episode was two hour season first season finale of the depression era drama “The Waltons.” Mother Walton Olivia contracts polio in February experiences an emotional journey involving experimental procedures, doubting doctors and the prospects of life in a wheelchair. The episode, called “An Easter Story,” draws deeply on Easter symbolism, with Olivia miraculously rising from bed on the holiday Sunday morning after a particularly vivid dream. The family even ends the episode by attending Easter services together.

But why not Easter? The missed opportunities are numerous. Take the Easter brunches, silly dresses, goofy multi-colored grass, bunny pictures and often violent egg hunts among children and adults alike.

And even Homer can sneak in a catchy line or two: “Silly rabbit, kicks are for ribs.”