It happens twice a year, at Christmas and Easter.

The newsweeklies sometimes carry cover stories. The newspapers print items calling the reason for these seasons into question.

This Easter is no exception, but the intensity level seems to have increased.

This year's first attack came from St. Paul Minnesota where local officials decided to ban the Easter Bunny from City Hall. They said it might offend some non-Christians, as if the Easter Bunny has anything to do with Easter's real significance. Apparently it escaped the notice of the city council that the Easter Bunny might offend Christians, because, like Santa Claus, it is a counterfeit. If they want to be consistent, perhaps the council should change the name of the city from St. Paul to, say, Paul Bunyan.

Newspapers also carried a story about a Florida State University scientist who speculated that Jesus didn't really walk on water; he walked on ice. The scientist theorized there must have been an unusual cold snap 2,000 years ago that froze the Sea of Galilee. This begs the question how Jesus was able to pull off such a stunt when Peter also walked on water, before his lack of faith sank him.

The New York Times piled on by trumpeting the discovery of a fossil in Arctic Canada as a "missing link," which it editorialized "puts the lie to creationist beliefs."

Not exactly.

Next was a story on the "Gospel of Judas," a work written between 130 and 170 C.E., long after the events it purports to describe. In this document, Jesus is revealed as having urged Judas to betray him. That a number of Judas' contemporaries said otherwise in Scripture matters not to skeptics.

Adding to the gospel of unbelief is the movie version of the best-selling novel, "The Da Vinci Code," which, if it is faithful to the book, will mix a few historical facts with a great deal of fiction. The book claims Jesus married Mary Magdalene and fathered children. The film is scheduled for release next month. Like the book, the movie will have as much to do with fact as Oliver Stone's film on the Kennedy assassination. Continued...