I WENT into three shops trying to buy an Easter card. I’m fond of flowers, I love eggs and I’ve no desire to perpetrate a hate crime against bunnies. But I was looking for something with a cross on, or an Easter garden, the sepulchral stone being rolled away.

None to be had. Not one.

I wondered for a moment if perhaps religious cards might be under the counter goods, or maybe placed on a high shelf like the lads’ mags. But no, there weren’t any at all. And I wondered further, as I walked home disappointed, whatever has become of the traditional English Christian calendar: Christmas, Lent, Easter, Whitsuntide and the other major feasts and fasts?

Intrigued, I did a bit of what they call “research”

and yelped with joy when I discovered there is a new thing called The Equality and Diversity Calendar.

Now, I rank myself as a bit of a satirist but this is way beyond any fantasy I’m capable of dreaming up. It includes not only deeply spiritual celebrations such as Red Nose Day and Halloween, but occasions to delight politically correct persons of all races, creeds and colours.

What kind of card do you send to wish someone a happy World Leprosy Day? Did you know that there is officially a Tinnitus Awareness Week and, since April is the cruellest month, at this very moment we are in the midst of Irritable Bowel Syndrome Fortnight?

I’m afraid I missed Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Month, which was February. I must look out for it next year. And Rare Disease Day – for the really upmarket hypochondriacs, I suppose, who are too grand to suffer merely a cold.

No Smoking Day I had heard of. But not the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination or an International Day Against Homophobia. I’m looking forward to the autumn when we can celebrate World Kindness Day and the International Day of Older Persons.

Is this new calendar a good thing? I’m sure there are those who support it as inclusive and extending the boundaries of differenceawareness.

It is the very emblem of those new superstitions, equality and diversity. But do you know what it reminded me of? For all the new calendar’s secular credentials, it called to mind one of those cringe-inducing church services where the over-enthusiastic modern parson treats the intercessions as a sort of world tour. The problem with this is that, if you pray for Afghanistan and Albania, but omit Mexico and Mali, you lay yourself open to the charge of discrimination.

I dug deeper and learnt that this wonderful new politically-correct calendar is not set in stone but a work in progress. Individuals and groups petition to have their organisation (or rare disease, perhaps?) included.

I wonder if any – Ingrowing Toenail Day?

– are ever dropped or temporarily relegated, like football teams? If not, the damn thing is surely bound to expand and enlarge itself until everyone in the world gets a mention.

In fact, because it is necessarily selective, the PC calendar itself ends up being divisive.

The only way to avoid selectivity and bias is not to mention anyone in particular but to use only general terms. The old Litany of the Church of England used to achieve this perfectly: “That it may please thee to preserve all that travel by land or air or water, all women labouring of child, all sick persons and young children and to show thy pity upon all prisoners and captives. Have mercy upon all men.” That “men” would never do though, would it?