Easter Sunday...

It is a quiet and very warm Easter Sunday here in San Diego.

I don't really have any fond memories of Easter. Unlike other holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving, I found Easter, as a child, to be fairly uncomfortable. It was one of the few Sundays that my mother put her foot down and insisted we all go to church (my father excepted). She eventually gave up, but not for lack of trying. Beyond that, I found the relative competitive nature of Easter egg hunting to be a little too much for my non-competitive soul and the binging on so much candy--mainly chocolate and jelly beans--just ended up making me feel queasy and over sugar-inated.

I did like painting hard-boiled eggs, but I seldom got past the "let's make this one blue!" phase. No elaborate designs or hand-painted masterpieces. I didn't discover any dormant artistic skills until long past egg painting age. My mother sometimes raced through this totally unnecessary holiday tradition, smearing the eggs with store-bought dye with Q-tips. "Get it done!" seemed to be her mantra, like some of us were expecting it to be an Eastern given. I guess we were, especially at a young age, but we quickly outgrew it. I think the relative mess of the whole thing--just another thing to clean up--also got to her. I also liked the days off from school. We usually had Thursday, Friday and Monday, sometimes known as "Easter Monday"--God knows why. Maybe Christ needed an extra day off after pulling the whole resurrection thing? But these days almost always disappeared if we had make-up days due to snow cancellations. To be honest, the concept of "snow days" was more thrilling. It was a special super-secret surprise bonus day off, making it all the more enjoyable.

I have long been a bit uncomfortable with the collision of religious- and commerce-related factions on Easter. While it doesn't bother me at all on Christmas, Easter almost cries out to be a solely religious holiday for those that want to observe it as such, without the crass commercialism of a manufactured entity--the Easter Bunny, how lame is that?--to compete with the real purpose. I am NOT a religious person but I understand the importance of it in some peoples' lives. What I don't understand is why it can't be either/or, why it has to be both. I don't think there was an Easter egg hunt before the crucifixtion.

Comments

[Tommy!]

You know....Jesus Died for us on friday...then on sunday Eggs are dyed for us..... Does it make sense I don't know. But here comes jesus, HIDE THE EGGS!!!

[pam]

Easter nearly surpasses Xmas for sheer volume of chocolate. It's incredible.

[Shell]

Easter was always a sorta cool holiday for me when I was a kid; we would each get a new pair of shoes, something chocolate (usually a bunny or egg), and then we'd go watch the Easter Parade down the Beach. For the religious part of it, we'd watch The Ten Commandments.