I don't know if it's because this is the first year I've lived alone in a long time -- okay, ever -- but Easter seems to have become a real big deal since the last time I checked in. As I believe I have mentioned before in this little pocket of cyberspace, I wasn't raised in the church, so Easter was never really about the resurrection of Jesus in my house. Mostly it was about jelly beans as I recall. Some time between the empty nest and the motor home my mom and stepdad started attending church and maybe that's part of it too, along with me living by myself, but folks seemed extra-concerned about me spending this Easter Sunday alone.
It started with the neighbs and his ma, who invited me to not one, but two family Easter celebrations. After much hemming and hawing I opted for PrEaster, which occurred last weekend as the name implies. I witnessed my first-ever egg hunt and cannot recall the last time I felt so cheated. I had no idea this kind of thing had been going on all around me all the time I was a kid.
Then I was trying to talk my mom into coming down from northern Michigan and staying Saturday night with me. "What?!" she said. "I can't leave my husband alone on Easter!!! " in the tone most people would reserve for saying something along the lines of "I can't leave my husband alone in the shark cage!!!" If it hadn't been for the frantic disgust conveyed in this statement, I might have pointed out he could probably handle putting out the jelly beans on his own this year, but I thought better of it.
Then there came a veritable flurry of invitations from any number of friends cajoling me to partake in ham with them on Sunday, and here's the thing of it: I started to sense maybe they were onto something. I actually got to where I was feeling sorry for myself for being all alone on Easter, and wondering if there was something wrong with me or something. Fortunately, I ended up joining in a ham-lasagna-and board-game Easter bonanza just in the nick of time. Otherwise who knows what might have happened, I might just have ended up under a bench in the park with an empty bottle of 5 o'clock, the plastic kind so I wouldn't hurt myself, another lonely pagan crying over her Cadbury egg.
The upshot of it is that, at last imbued with the festive spirit of Easter, I felt compelled to call my family. My dad thought that was the funniest thing ever, of course, and commented on how, though he loved hearing my voice, if I had failed to call him and wish him a Happy Easter he certainly never would have noticed. Meanwhile, the neighbs declined the nomination to dress up as a huge bunny and distribute goodies to the children. So we all came through okay is I guess what I'm saying here, and participated in Easter in respectively agreeable measures.
But I still hate jelly beans.
2 comments:
we don't do anything religious for easter... no prayer no talk of jesus, nothing.
I vaguely recall my mother trying to bring it all into perspective on why we celebrate easter at all in our house by talking about jesus one year... but that kind of went to the wayside like getting presents on jesus' birthday.
All in all chocolate eggs abound we sit down to our feast of Arroz Con Pollo made by my dad (who always says something is wrong with it, either too dry too mushy too much of this too little of that etc) and ate jelly beans while drinking champagne.
It's a pretty sweet deal -secular Easter- it's about a good as secular Christmas, family getting together to eat and be merry, not bad at all. And i don't have to pass any ham with a side of christian-guilt either.
thats my 2 cents.
See, that sounds great. I mean, we celebrate a secular Christmas in my family, why wouldn't we do something around Easter? Maybe this year is a sign we're headed in that direction.
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