A lot of people are going to say a lot of things about the religious whatnots of this holiday. The pagan rites, the Christian traditions, and all the things in the middle of a spiritual nature will probably be written about on blog after blog. So I think I'm going to talk about the trappings of Easter, kind of a general overview of my memories and impressions of the holiday.
EASTER LIST ONE: THREE MEMORIES
Somewhere in my closet is a box that holds the two or three remaining pictures of me as a young child wearing Easter dresses. Mind you, this was the 70s, so one dress is pink-ish coral and the other dress is pink-ish carnation. My hair was far redder back then, so the whole thing looks rather horrible. There might be a picture where the dress is powder blue, but let's face it; no one looked good in that.
Easter was never a big holiday for me as a kid. I know I went to some egg hunts, but they must have been traumatic because I've blocked them out. The only distinct memory I have of any of them is a plastic molded green basket and some sad Easter egg someone had stepped on. You know how that looks, just that kind of half-flattened shatter of colored shell that is still attached, but white can be seen underneath. Ohh . . . and some mud, because we all know that egg hunts happen on days when it is raining or it just rained.
Back when I was teaching college, I would sometimes go to the parking lot behind the local library. I tended to enjoy grading papers while sitting in my car surrounded by nature. This usually involved me going to the park by the school, but sometimes it would be really busy (or the geese would be more psycho than usual) and the library would end up being my destination. There was no lake, but there were nice shade trees and most often, it was empty.
One day, I was out there grading papers when a group of people came out onto the grassy field in front of me. It was a group of children and their parents, probably teachers. The children all stood at one end of the field and their parents stood in front of them. As the children moved forward, slowly, their parents took pictures of them. I realized they all had Easter baskets and this was some small egg hunt. I also realized that more than likely, the parents taking pictures were stepping on eggs.
EASTER LIST TWO: THREE HATREDS
There are things I absolutely hate about Easter and most of them have to do with fake outs. I hate the plastic Easter grass, which is basically the STD of the holiday. Easter grass, beyond the general business of supporting eggs, is evil. It gets everwhere. On your clothes, in your carpet, in the mouths of dogs, cats, and children, in your shoes, all over your car. Even months later, you will find it lurking around.
I also hate the fake little plastic eggs. You know, the ones that open up so you can put candy or money or drugs in them. Half the time, they never close. The other half of the time, they close at first, but open up during transport, spilling your candy or money or drugs into the evil fake plastic grass. The only thing I like about them is the sound the make when they open. That sort of "shoooopk" sound. Love that. But not enough to make them worth it.
Third of all, and this is the most emotionally wrecking of all the things I hate about Easter, I hate chocolate bunnies that fake you out. You see a beautiful choco bunny and then you take a bite in PSYCH! Empty! Or worse, PSYCH! Filled with bad marshmellow. It's not that I dislike marshmellow as a rule, but when you're not expecting it and it's poor quality, the whole experience is troubling.
EASTER LIST THREE: THREE LOVES
Having bitched about all the fakery, I have to talk about things I do love about the holiday. The first is the baskets. Oh yes, I know baskets can be cheaply made, pourly constructed, and sometimes just plain WTF, but quite often, it's easy to find beautiful Easter baskets that have a lot of character and beauty to them. A few years back, my roommate bought me the most beautiful Easter basket. I kept it in my closet for a while, but then felt it was too lovely to leave in the shadows. Once I brought it out, it became a cat bed. I was fine with that though because the cat looked beautiful in the basket.
I love how the holiday is a marriage of Christ rising from the dead and the festival of Eostre, which is all about fertility rites. We eat symbols of life and fertility and have rabbits all over the place. Somehow we combine this with chocolate and make the whole blood and death/spring time sex thing be innocent and full of Peeps.
Finally, and most of all, really, I love dying eggs. Even as a kid, this was my favorite part. I always wanted to get a kit as soon as they appeared in the stores and start the dying as soon as we got home. I always loved to set the eggs in the dye as long as possible to get really deep colors. I would pull them out and marvel at the emeralds and deep reds. Then, just for fun, I would leave some in just for a brief time and get pastels. I also love it when part of the color gets messed up and you get a darker portion. Ohh, how I love that!
So yes, a whole mess of Easter impressions . . . a day late, but I was raging about things yesterday. But today I'm all snickery nostalgia and Peeps. Happy Easter.
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