Easter

This week, my husband and I had our first discussion of how we should - or if we should - celebrate Easter. We've been married almost 6 years, but of course, this year is different because our son is now old enough to participate in Easter related activities. This in itself isn't a big deal. A couple weeks ago, I signed my 2 1/2 year old active explorer up for the neighborhood yearly Easter Egg hunt in Fort Greene park. He had a great time looking for eggs (I thought he would, which is why I signed him up) and even got his picture in the neighborhood paper.


The issue was more about what would we do at home. Before having children, we didn't celebrate Easter at all, except for one year when we stayed with my aunt shortly after my uncle's death and we all went to Easter morning Mass in his honor. Honestly, Easter is one of those holidays I love simply for the reason of its brunch potential. I also, I admit, love Easter baskets. I love them so much I wish my mother still sent me one. I don't even like candy. I just like the idea of a pretty basket full of small gifts inside.


It's my love of the Easter basket that had me assume, that while we would do nothing else for Easter, of course, we would color eggs, have Fyo search for them, and give him a non-candy oriented (aka sugar sensitive child friendly) Easter basket.


My husband disagreed.


"Easter? Why?" He demanded. "The commercial aspect doesn't resonate with us and the religious aspect doesn't resonate with us at all."


This is true. Of all the holidays in the Christian calendar, Easter is the hardest for us to wrap our heads around. I'm all for the Pagan origins of the celebration of the Spring Equinox (which is kind of how I was raised in my untraditional-question-everything-Liberal-Portland household) and love the idea of new beginnings and celebrating blooms emerging on tree branches after many months of being submerged under snow. It's the crucifixion of Christ for the sake of your sins that my husband and I have a hard time with.

I know. This is one of those things you aren't really supposed to admit in mixed company. And yes, I know, if I was a member of the Puritan clan on the Mayflower, my disbelief in this seemingly minor detail that actually is fundamental to all of Christianity would have me condemned as a witch or heretic and I'd be burned at the stake, drowned, or beaten with stones like Asian village laundry.  But really, the whole died for our sins thing, I can’t even begin to grasp the interpretation. 

Not that it matters, I wasn’t raised in a church going family, and while my husband was, he is like many friends of ours where they don’t identify with the religion they were raised with. Still, even as living as secularists, it can be a challenge to not bump our heads on the origins of holidays, and to question our celebration of it. 

And Husband is right, we’re not the types to trade in the religious significance for the commercial aspect, especially when it entails loads of cheap hydrogenated palm oily cancer causing sugared treats. And it can be hard to ignore the holiday all together. And do we really want to, given its brunch potential? And given that it could actually be warm enough for some quality time outside searching for eggs or just playing in the yard while enjoying good food? And honestly, I love holidays. I love celebrating and I love doing things to get ready for them. 

So what did I say to my husband? Simply, that I thought it would be fun to color Easter Eggs with Fyo and I think it will continue to be in years to come, even all the potential there is now in terms of coloring Easter Eggs (did you know that Martha Stewart alone has 43 pages of ideas of how to color eggs?).  I even think it could pass as educational in a pre-schooler elementary home-school chemistry kind of way. 

Husband agreed. “Oh,” he said, as if he had never encountered the notion of coloring eggs before, “it would be fun.”
I realized we do this with all the holidays. That most the holidays on the calendar have origins in things I don’t necessarily believe in. Columbus Day has been used to celebrate and promote such patriotic ideals as supporting war, the importance of the loyalty to the nation and celebrating social progress, though the arrival of Columbus essentially resulted in the European colonization of continent and the death of 99% of the indigenous population either through wars or diseases. Not that we do much to celebrate the holiday, other than marvel at the skewed US history that gets fed to school children in the production of Columbus Day plays. Thanksgiving is seemingly benign as it essentially celebrates a bountiful harvest at the end of the growing season, but again, it’s the mythology around it that we celebrate in elementary schools when we depict the Indians and the Pilgrims having a potluck, and the Indians teaching white people how to fish and grow corn. Right before, the white people killed them all of course. July 4^th again, is a great excuse for picnics and barbecues, but yearly I get turned off by how it gets spun into the patriotic-why-we’re-so-superior-brouhaha.


Near as I can tell, the best way to reconcile myself to all these holidays is to stay focused on the food – the brunch potential, and the enjoyment of partaking of such feasts in the lovely lively company of friends.  You know, as the Bible says, “Eat, drink, and be merry.”
Easter morning? We colored eggs and made bread pudding. I even made fresh challah (a nod to Passover in the name of religious diversity) the day before for the cream soaked dessert-y tasting lush brunch we enjoyed. My husband and son worked in the yard on our raised beds, so we can plant our garden. Over brunch with friends, we got tips for gardening in Brooklyn, in our yard, with our amount of light, the things that grew the best and so on. We stayed focused on the aspect of the holiday that does resonate with us, the one of new beginnings, of potential, the opportunity in all things growing.