I've always been a fan of Easter. Even from a very early age, I liked it better than Christmas. Rebirth has always appealed to me more than birth, when it comes right down to it. I mean, anybody could have been born Madonna Louise Ciccone, but to have become Madonna... brilliant. Being born is just not that big a deal. Being re-born — that's the trick, innit?

For me, more celebratory and significant than The Beginning, represented by Christmas, was the chance of a New Beginning Easter symbolizes. Not that New Beginnings are a cakewalk. It's easier to lie down and die than to lie down and die and get up again. (I definitely think Eliot Spitzer should pose for Playgirl, by the way).

That's what Easter's always meant to me, anyway. Even as a kid, it represented the possibility of someday breaking the surly bonds of suburbia. Easter was all about freedom. Christmas is ontological.  It's about being. Easter is existential.  About becoming. Christmas was just sperm competition, continued. A subtle, ingenious way for parents to show which one of their progeny they prefer to survive and reproduce. If you got the three-pack of tube socks and your brother got the Atari, that's a hint.  I took it.

Easter is more of a stretch, conceptually, I'll grant you. But I was never really bothered by the logical inconsistencies of religious holidays — that always seemed to be part of what they were about. It's very adult to pretend like things make sense, even when the whole world is obviously on crack. Or to pretend that we can grasp the sense in them, when we're basically on crack, ourselves.

Personally, I never labored under the illusion that you needed to believe something for it to be true, or that because you did it was. Belief and Truth are often indifferent to each other. Theirs has always been a marriage of convenience. I do appreciate the necessity of keeping up appearances, of course. 

But the actual existence of the Easter Bunny, like that of Santa Claus, was never of especial interest to me. Just as my belief in the existence of God or aliens is not a matter of urgency for me.  They don't need my permission, or submission to be, I hope.  Live and let live is my motto.  As long as you don't come at me with an anal probe, or demand that I offer you blood sacrifices, we'll get on just fine with each other. 

That gods tend to demand belief of mortals has always seemed to me a weakness rather than a strength of theirs.  As Mr. Obama recently found, even Messiahs are judged by the company they keep, and mankind is a rascally lot, all right.  That mortals seem so eager to oblige their spoiled and petulant gods if only they'll protect them against other mortals, or help them win the lottery or American Idol, or get them out of a spot of trouble, or make sure they don't get caught doing something they shouldn't be doing in the first place, isn't all that surprising.  Gods and Man were obviously made for each other.

Belief is useful, don't get me wrong.  It serves a distinct and necessary social function.  The social order is founded on it.  The monetary system would collapse without it.  But it is separate from Truth.  You could say it's a separate truth, I guess. 

People can believe anything, if they set their minds to it.  It's a brilliant survival mechanism that has served our species well.  Many of the things we believe may not be so, but then neither do they need to be in order to serve the purpose for which they were invented.  So many things don't actually exist, many more than do — or vice-versa, I can never remember — whatever the case, there is a peculiar, often charming logic reserved for believing in things that don't. 

As a child I took nothing for granted.  Everything was peculiar and people behaved suspiciously as a rule.  But I was not in any immediate danger, and was perfectly happy to just sort of go with it.  I was a guest in a strange land, and I would try to be a good one — to learn the language, to understand the culture.  It would never be home, though — I would always be sleeping in someone else's bed, wearing someone else's clothes, speaking someone else's language.  A permanent exile. 

What I especially liked about Easter was the possibility it imparted of getting back to where I was from.  To Freedom.  Freedom from the conditional.  Freedom from relation.  Freedom from the compensatory little-t truths of this foreign land.  Freedom from belief.  The Freedom of the Truth of What Is.  I always understood that to be the promise of the resurrection.  To disappear into The Light of What Is.  What a strange thing to be able to think about.  How unlike anything else we talk about.     

The fact that Easter Sunday was one of the only stress-free holidays around my house growing up made it all the better. And the sanctuary of our little church was filled with Easter lilies, and everyone was in their Easter best. It was always so cheerful and bright. And we'd have brunch afterwards, which is probably how I became the brunch slut I am today. Without those Sunday brunches my childhood would have been bleak, lemme tell you.

The joy of Easter is tied to Spring, of course. Christmas, coming as it does in the deep of winter, and involving a panicked flight and a desperate bloody birth in a barn in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, was not for me. The midnight mass was beautiful, with all the candles, but it was about a little light in the darkness. Easter is what became of that little light.  Easter is all light.  Madonna Louise Ciccone, meet Madonna.

I'll admit that there are some things about Easter that don't add up, but that's always how these rags-to-riches stories are. It's that whole deus ex machina thing.  It's always interesting to see how people for whom things like this have to add up do the math, though.

I mean, take the whole question of why, if Christ rose on the third day, we commemorate his crucifixion on a Friday, and his resurrection on a Sunday, not three days later on a Monday. I mean, whatever, right? It's actually a pretty small detail in the physics of resurrection. But you've got some math wiz out there who's worked it all out:

It is not difficult now to determine the day on which Jesus was crucified. Counting back three days from the Sabbath, when He rose, we come to Wednesday, the fourth, or very middle, day of the week. Jesus was crucified on WEDNESDAY, the middle day of the week, He died on the cross shortly after 3 P.M. that afternoon, was buried before sunset Wednesday evening.

Now COUNT THE THREE DAYS AND THREE NIGHTS. His body was Wednesday, Thursday and Friday NIGHTS in the grave — THREE NIGHTS. It also was there through the daylight parts of Thursday, Friday and Saturday — THREE DAYS. He rose Saturday — the Sabbath — late afternoon, shortly before sunset, at the same TIME OF DAY that He was buried! And Sunday morning at sunrise He was NOT THERE — HE WAS ALREADY RISEN!

Now we come to an objection some may raise, yet the very point which PROVES this truth! Perhaps you have noticed that the Scriptures say the day AFTER the crucifixion was a SABBATH! Hence, for centuries, people have blindly assumed the crucifixion was on Friday! Now we have shown by all four Gospels that the crucifixion day — Wednesday — was called "the preparation." The preparation day for THE SABBATH. But for WHAT Sabbath?

...Jesus was crucified ON THE PASSOVER! And what was THE PASSOVER? It was the ancient day of Israel commemorating their deliverance from Egypt, and picturing to them the crucifixion of Christ and their deliverance from sin. ...The children of Israel killed the lambs, and struck the blood over the door-posts and on the side-posts of their houses, and wherever the blood had thus been applied the death-angel passed over that house, sparing it from death.

...JESUS WAS SLAIN ON THE VERY SAME DAY THE PASSOVER HAD BEEN SLAIN EVERY YEAR! He was crucified on the 14th Abib, the first Hebrew month of the year! And this day, the PASSOVER, was the day before, and the preparation for, THE FEAST day, or annual high day Sabbath, which occurred on the 15th Abib. THIS Sabbath might occur on ANY day of the week. Frequently it occurs, even today, and is celebrated by the Jews, on THURSDAY.

And the Hebrew calendar shows that in the year Jesus was crucified, the 14th Abib, Passover day, the day Jesus was crucified, was WEDNESDAY. And the annual Sabbath was THURSDAY. This was the Sabbath that drew on as Joseph of Arimathea hastened to bury the body of Jesus late that Wednesday afternoon.

Well, I'm convinced. It may make a little too much sense now for me to buy it — it's all a little too neat and tidy all the sudden, innit? But whatever. Of course, the bedrock belief of all True Believers is that their belief matters, as if not believing a thing would make it not true.  The lengths the Hebrew God had to go to convince them, they'd better believe, the cunts.

Personally, I don't feel like somebody needs to go and get himself nailed to a cross to convince me he loves me. And, honestly, I'd rather he didn't. Crosses are big and cumbersome, and you can't take them along on day trips to the countryside. It turns what could've been a perfectly charming hike in the Presidentials into a big, gory Passion of The Christ ordeal. No thanks.

Chillax! You're the Son of God? Cool. Let's do brunch.

Now, if I could just figure out how the Easter Bunny lays those painted eggs, I'd be set!


Happy Easter, all.