05/02/2024

The Biden administration banned children from submitting Easter eggs with religious themes for its 2024 “Celebrating National Guard Families” art contest.

The competition, which is part of the White House’s annual Easter Egg Roll, explicitly stipulated that egg designs not feature any “religious symbols” on the Christian holiday.

“The Submission must not include any questionable content, religious symbols, overtly religious themes,” a flyer with instructions from the White House stated.

The Easter contest asks children of National Guard families to decorate an egg template with “a snapshot of their life – a favorite activity, scenery in your state, your military family, a day-in-your life, etc,” according to the White House flyer. The winning submissions will be recreated “in real hen eggs by talented egg artists” from across the U.S. and “displayed at the White House this Easter and Passover season.”

Other restrictions include depictions promoting “bigotry, racism, hatred or harm against any group or individual based on race, gender, religion, nationality disability, sexual orientation or age,” the White House stated. Child participants were also told not to depict “illegal drugs or firearms” or to include “material that is inappropriate, indecent, obscene, hateful, tortious, defamatory, slanderous or libelous.”

This would not be the first Easter-related controversy to plague President Joe Biden’s administration. In 2022, a person dressed as the holiday icon approached Biden as he attempted to make comments about Afghanistan, gesticulated wildly to get his attention and led the confused-looking president away from the group of people he’d been addressing.