Kylie Lang: If hot cross buns offend the woke so much, they should stop buying them

If the purpose of a Brisbane bakery’s decision to ditch the crucifix symbol and rename “hot cross buns” is to snub Christianity, then the woke who support it should ignore the public holiday and get rid of anything to do with Easter and religion, writes Kylie Lang.

So a Brisbane bakery has decided to remove the “hot cross” from its buns and rename them Easter Time buns – why not scrap them altogether?

If the purpose of ditching the crucifix symbol is to snub Christianity, then get rid of anything to do with Easter since this is, fundamentally, a celebration of Jesus’s death and resurrection.

The bakery in question is in the inner-west – what a surprise – but putting the woke Left aside for a minute, I don’t get why leaving the buns as they were traditionally intended to be is an issue.

Have they been offending atheists for all these centuries?

If you don’t like what hot cross buns represent, then don’t buy them. Simple.

I wonder if the bakery will stop making loaves of bread next, given the biblical reference to Jesus and his loaves and fishes miracle.

Or, as one Courier-Mail reader noted, will bread now be called “baked FWY” (flour, water, yeast)?

The undeniable reality is that Easter, like Christmas, has become nothing more than an extended holiday for many people.

This weekend, there’ll be loads of Easter eggs, backyard barbies, and tedious traffic as families escape to the beach like it’s their only chance all year.

Easter time buns for sale.

Some people will go to church – probably the only time besides Christmas – but as Australia becomes an increasingly secular nation, many will not give the origins of Easter, or those buns, a second thought.

But they’ll gladly take the public holiday, thank you very much.

Easter has become just another avenue for rampant commercialism.

As I was writing this column, I received an email from David Jones advertising “The Easter Event – save 20-25 per cent on full-priced fashion, shoes, accessories and toys”.

And as for the seemingly contentious hot cross buns, they are available well before Easter, hitting supermarket shelves in January, along with the ubiquitous chocolate eggs. Cha-ching!

I’m not the only one who finds this greedy and irritating.

In January last year, an aggrieved Coles shopper plastered this handwritten note on a packet of buns: “The last time I checked, the celebration of the birth and death of Jesus were not separated by less than a month!’”

A photo of her note was posted on a community Facebook page and all hell broke loose, with the divide between traditionalists and (let’s call them) progressives flaring up.

The latter would no doubt love the morphing of the classic bun into myriad flavour combinations.

In a stroke of marketing genius to capture more customers, you can now buy them in chocolate chip, coffee, white chocolate, and Vegemite and cheese.

Make your own, and a world of possibilities opens up.

Easter is, fundamentally, a celebration of Jesus’s death and resurrection, and the cross on hot cross buns mean something to some people. Picture: Supplied.

Delicious magazine last week published 28 “inventive takes” on the hot cross bun for people “sick and tired” of the original. There are recipes using bacon, prosciutto and parmesan, fig and orange, pear, marshmallow, and passionfruit.

All sound appetising enough, but I prefer to honour tradition.

Historically, the buns mark the end of the Christian season of Lent, and aside from the obvious symbolism of the cross, the spices represent those used to embalm Jesus’s body after the crucifixion.

There are various theories, naturally enough, about the origins of the buns.

One is that they came from England where, in the 14th century, a monk at St Albans Abbey developed a bun to give to the poor on Good Friday, also known as the Day of the Cross.

Another is that the Greeks marked cakes with a cross in the 6th century, but not to signal Christ but rather the start of spring in honour of the goddess Eostre, which some say is how we got the name Easter.

In the late 16th century Queen Elizabeth I forbade the sale of hot cross buns other than on Good Friday, Christmas and at burials.

Those who refused to toe the line had their goods confiscated and given to the poor. Imagine that, Coles and Woolies.

Hot cross buns subsequently went underground, you might say, and were mostly made in home kitchens where they attained magical status, including helping the sick recover and protecting a home from fire.

The English nursery rhyme Hot Cross Buns, published in 1767, carries the now familiar line “one a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns” so we know one thing for certain: these buns are not a modern construct aimed to offend non-Christians.

They’ve been around for centuries. So why not let them be?

Speaking about the Brisbane bakery cancelling out the buns, the co-founder of Brumby’s bakery franchise Michael Sherlock said it was “just another case of woke madness”.

“You can’t have Easter without hot cross buns.”

In 2023, it appears you can.

Kylie Lang is Associate Editor of The Courier-Mail

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