If you’ve looked at greeting cards or gone shopping anytime in the past five years, then surely you are familiar with the secularization of Christmas (Happy Holidays!) and Easter (Happy Spring!).  I figure this is one way for the greeting card industry to expand the number of people I can actually send cards to at various times of the year—especially now that e-cards have arrived and I’m buying fewer cards than I once did.  They have to work to maintain revenue.

But the other day I was looking for a “Religious Easter Greeting” and was surprised to find that they were now being written by the same group of generic well-wishers.   You don’t have to be particularly steeped in Christian tradition to know that a religious Easter card should say “He is Risen!” or at least contain the words “resurrection” or “empty tomb” somewhere in the body of the greeting.  Victory, joy and love are also appropriate, but it’s that Easter morning surprise that’s crucial to the celebration.   All I could find were sentiments like “God bless you with a happy spring!”  and “May you see God’s love in the beauty of the earth.”  Granted these do contain the word “God” and could be constued as religious; however, they are not “Religious Easter Greetings.”  In fact they’re not particularly creative greeting cards of any sort.  No matter how pretty the picture.