For the 18th year in a row, Google refused to honor the Christian holiday of Easter with a celebratory “doodle” on its website, despite commemorating similar Hindu and Jewish festivals and dedicating an entire page to the Muslim festival of Ramadan.
Christians and conservatives on Twitter noted that Google did not put up a doodle to commemorate the holiday on Sunday.
“Why has Google not honored that obscure event known as Easter?” Townhall senior columnist Kurt Schlichter asked in a Twitter poll. A full 72 percent of over 7,000 votes chose “They hate Christians.”
Why has Google not honored that obscure event known as Easter?
— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) April 1, 2018
Daily Wire reporter Ryan Saavedra noted that “Google always has special graphics and displays on their homepage for special days and holidays. But not for Easter.”
.@Google always has special graphics and displays on their homepage for special days and holidays.
But not for Easter. pic.twitter.com/J7BO1w6W1m
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) April 1, 2018
Some Twitter users shared a photo contrasting the tech company’s alleged doodle for Ramadan with the lack of a doodle for Easter on April 1, 2018.
Compare and contrast.
Google does Muslim festival of Ramadan. (Left)
Google does Christian celebration of Easter. (Right)
I think we see where Google stands. pic.twitter.com/w5D14cBRhs— David Vance (@DVATW) April 2, 2018
The image on the left, however, was never used as an official doodle. A Muslim artist submitted this doodle in 2010, requesting the search behemoth honor Ramadan in a doodle on its homepage.
Even so, Google has favored Ramadan over Easter. The search giant has a subpage dedicated to the Muslim festival, accessible at https://ramadan.withgoogle.com. The site also includes a link to Google’s “helpful Qibla Finder.” Google Maps helps Muslims find the right direction to face Mecca, the city in Saudi Arabia where Islam began, for their prayers.
No similar page exists for the Christian holiday of Easter Sunday, the day when Christians commemorate Jesus Christ rising from the dead. Neither does Google host a page for Lent, the season leading up to Easter during which many Christians fast, as Muslims fast during Ramadan.
When Fox News asked about Google’s apparent neglect for Easter, the tech company pointed to a tweet about search trends the company sent out on Saturday.
Happy Easter! Gather ‘round for this week’s particularly egg-cellent search trends → https://t.co/lhaCtmpPAd pic.twitter.com/FuagbR4NEl
— Google (@Google) March 30, 2018
“We don’t have Doodles for religious holidays, in line with our current Doodle guidelines,” Google said in a statement. “Doodles may appear for some non-religious celebrations that have grown out of religious holidays, such as Valentine’s Day, Holi’s Festival of Colors, Tu B’Av and the December holiday period, but we don’t include religious imagery or symbolism as part of these.”
Many Americans and other people across the world celebrate Easter as a cultural holiday as well, however. Why does Google celebrate the Hindu festival of Holi and the Jewish festival of Tu B’Av — both religious festivals with a secular component — but not Easter, which also has a strong secular/commercial component?
Does the tech company (which is being sued for viewpoint discrimination against conservatives) consider Easter more dangerous, perhaps because on that day Christians celebrate the bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ after His Crucifixion and death, events central to the Christian faith (I Corinthians 15:14)?
Perhaps the tech company should have simply stated that while there are an estimated two billion Christians in the world, some Christian traditions (Russian, Greek, and other forms of Eastern Orthodox) celebrate Easter one week later than other Christians. Instead, Google attempted to deny any religious bias, despite its special webpage for Ramadan.
Google’s last doodle for Easter came out in 2000, two years after the search giant launched. Perhaps at that time, the company realized just how culturally important and truly global the celebration of Easter is. The real reasoning behind this move remains a mystery.
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