Who are the most easily offended and entitled group of people in the world? The religious bunch should be the right answer, especially the Christians. Every day there is something to be offended about, and now it is the turn of Google to be on the offenders’ chopping board. Their crime? Neglecting to create a doodle to commemorate the Easter celebrations.
For a religion that claims to promote tolerance, amongst other things, this is straight up petty and reeks of a sense of entitlement only Christians can muster. So now, Conservative Christians and alt-right commentators are venting their anger over Google not creating one of their famous Doodles to celebrate the Easter Holiday. Several prominent right-wing profiles, including Hollywood actor James Woods, attacked the search engine for being ‘anti-Christian’.
Google has defended itself, stating it does not have any Doodles for religious-only holidays and has not had an Easter Doodle since 2000. Woods re-tweeted a post by the editor of far-right news website Infowars, which asked why ‘Google has a doodle for every obscure ‘woke’ person/event imaginable, but nothing for Easter?’. The Casino actor, added his own reply, claiming that ‘They loathe Christians. Pure and simple’.
Alt-right conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec tweeted to his 300,000 followers: ‘Happy Easter to everyone except Google today’. Google often alters the company’s logo on its start page to celebrate events, honor prominent people or mark a holiday, known as a Google Doodle. The company defended itself, saying its ‘Doodle guidelines’ state that there are no Doodles for religious holidays.
However, Google acknowledged that it had created Doodles for holidays which is celebrated by some religions, claiming that these – such as Tu B’Av, a Jewish ‘holiday of love’ and ‘the December holiday period’ – had grown out of being a religious holiday. ‘We don’t have Doodles for religious holidays, in line with our current Doodle guidelines,’ a statement seen by Fox News said.
‘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.’