Matzo with Mickey, Ramadan with Ms. Marvel, and Easter with Goofy
How Disney Does Abrahamic Religions in the 21st Century
“D23 Celebrates Ramadan!” The e-mail arrived in my inbox last week styled like all other Disney fan club emails— urgent, with an exclamation points in the subject line.
This past Sunday, we had an Abrahamic traditions* trifecta: it was Easter Sunday**, the middle of the weeklong Jewish holiday of Passover, and just past the midpoint of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan: all at once. It won’t happen again for over 30 more years. Social media was abuzz with both poignant and funny memes recognizing this sacred confluence.
So today on Faith In Disney, a brief look at how Disney Does Religious Diversity.
In my fan club e-mail, the top graphic was a photograph of Ms. Marvel (the fantastic Iman Vellani); below it, a link to a promotional story from last summer about the cast and crew. I guess when you finally have a Muslim superhero in the Marvelverse (which remains a really big deal), she gets to be above the fold for All Things Muslim.
The next story in the newsletter suggested that I download “Ramadan Coloring Pages.”
In keeping with the an-iconic traditions of classical Islamic art, the pages include intricate abstract designs. Some evoke the curlicues of Arabic calligraphy. I wonder who downloads them. Who colors them in? Where?
Above the pages, you can read a brief primer on Ramadan:
Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar—during which Muslims around the world observe a month-long period of abstaining from food and water from sunrise to sunset. While this can seem difficult, Ramadan is a month that Muslims look forward to all year long! It’s a time when Muslims are especially encouraged to be generous, and commit acts of service that put others first. The entire month is brimming with a strong sense of community and unity; is full of delicious food after the fast; and ends in a festive three-day holiday called Eid al-fitr.
You can join in on the Ramadan celebrations with this beautiful coloring page!
The idea that Muslims Look forward to this all year long! is a trifle odd— it makes it sound a bit more like Christmas and a bit less like—well— a holiday with fasting. But I appreciate that Disney is careful to attend to the fact that it is also a time of joy, feasts, and community—of feasting, not just bodily discipline, hopefully countering stereotypes of Islam that deem its practices “extreme”.
While this description of Ramadan is technically correct, it also one in which God has left the building. It is careful. Religious diversity matters —- but doctrines and deities are carefully left out of the frame.
In April 2022, Disney’s social media accounts presented a Passover suggestion. “Matzo recipe with Mickey and Minnie!” said the first graphic under a message wishing us “Chag Pesach Sameach, or Happy Passover,” with the two mouse celebrities looking over a baking tray covered with crisp cartoon matzot. The ingredients list calls for “2 cups shmura or all-purpose flour,” as well as cold water and kosher salt, then defines matzo (including an alternative transliteration). After telling us how to mix the ingredients and how to roll out and shape the matzot, we are told to “bake the matzo for about 15 minutes, until the matzo is slightly bubbly and golden in parts.”
Responses to the thread included a mix of appreciation, demands from Jewish fans for more Jewish Disney characters (along with casting of Jewish actors in such roles), and a few Christian castigations of Disney for being “woke” and “liberal,” declaring “Happy Easter!” in defiance.
This year on Instagram, a shiny animation featured Mickey and Minnie breaking the middle matzah in two in front of Cinderella Castle. “Chag sameach!-Happy Passover!” it said, to the strains of (of course) a bissel klezmer music.
On the Walt Disney Company’s Diversity and Inclusion website, there is an internal news document titled, “Disney Cast Members Share a Happy Passover.”“Chag Sameach! Happy Festival!” it begins. We learn that these California-based cast members joined together for a seder (apparently there was a companywide Zoom seder!), and that they shared “how they sprinkle a little Disney magic on this special holiday.” For the most part, they share relatively generic Ashkenazi-style memories of matzah ball soup and discuss how they share their traditions with fellow non-Jewish cast members.
Then it gets more interesting. “What is your favorite Passover memory?” the interviewer asks. Here are two out of three of the answers:
Sarah: When I was younger, we celebrated Passover at Magic Kingdom. We brought our own “Kosher for Passover” chips and soda and ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on Matzah. We sat in front of Splash Mountain while watching the parade. It is still so fun to keep tradition and have great family time at Walt Disney World!
Yonit: I’ll never forget the Passover Seder that my mom hosted at our Synagogue – the theme was “The Incredibles.” I don’t think there is a family out there who can’t relate to “The Incredibles.” My mom connected each character and their superpowers to symbolism in the Haggadah! For example – part of the story reads “God brought the Israelites out of Egypt with an outreached arm” – guess who that sounds like? Mrs. Incredible!
What does it mean to celebrate Passover at the Magic Kingdom? Or to theme your seder to The Incredibles? On one level, neither is unusual. Many families visit theme parks, zoos and other fun places during chol ha-moed (the middle days of Passover). Sarah’s memory, though, incorporates Disney World as a hybrid kind of space—one where family vacation memories collide with Passover ones. Like many Jews throughout American history, she was excited to “keep tradition” by eating matzah sandwiches while also taking part in a Disney ritual by viewing the afternoon parade.
In a midrashic manner, Yonit’s mother connected the biblical imagery of an “outreached arm” with the stretchy capabilities of Mrs. Incredible (Maiden name: Elastigirl.) In traditional haggadot (books read at a Passover dinner), a host of heroes appear—biblical heroes, rabbinic heroes, and more. Perhaps an Incredibles-themed seder just provides another layer of heroism.
Easter, of course, has been a presence in the Disney parks since their beginning.
Easter parades began in Disneyland’s first spring. Today, merchandise, chocolate eggs, and other festivities abound. In fact, my very first trip to a Disney park was during Easter week, 1983. Goofy was posing for pictures in front of a giant “Happy Easter!” sign, which presented a condundrum for our Jewish family.
My mom made Goofy move.
No easter in our pictures! But I still got a plastic easter egg with candy inside of it.
Like the Ramadan coloring pages with Allah, Disney Easter is not currently saturated with references to the risen Jesus (nor is there a stations of the cross reenactment, as there was, for many years, at the nearby Holy Land Experience Orlando— an evangelical Christian theme park—before it went bankrupt.) Disney religion is the kind of religion I like the best—- a religion of the senses, with sights, sounds, colors, tastes, and smells. It’s not a religion of theological debates.
After all, no one wants anybody nailing 95 theses onto Sleeping Beauty’s castle.
The Walt Disney Company has “four keys” (rather like pillars!) that are central to its mission. Every cast member learns them during the onboarding process. The four original keys are:
Safety
Courtesy
Show
Efficiency
In 2021—following 2020, a year of racial reckoning in the United States that included the Black Lives Matter protests—the Walt Disney Company added a fifth key: “Inclusion.” “We will never stop working to make sure Disney is a welcoming place for all,” said Josh D’Amaro, Chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products. (Here’s the promotional video).
And so it came to pass—near the end of the first Disney century— that the Disney park visitors crossed the moat into the castle. And the moat split before them, and they ate Easter eggs— after sundown—and broke the afikomen with Mickey at their iftar, and all was well.
And everyone went home with lots of souvenirs.
*This is not a perfect term (at all), but because Jews, Christians, and Muslims all trace their roots to Abraham in their sacred narratives, the parlance of the three “Abrahamic” traditions has emerged as shorthand to describe how this nexus— a discourse that grew during interfaith encounters following September 11, 2001. But the term also does ideological work. Here is one critique.
**For the Western churches—Roman Catholics and most Protestants.