WHAT EASTER MEANS TO ME

Mixed feelings really. While I renounce the Catholic indoctrination (they used to call it Christian Doctrine) I was subjected to as a kid I strangely miss it and its rituals. To be fair though I also miss trams, curtain raising at films, courteous drivers and a police force that could be relied upon to catch burglars, drug dealers and vandals. I guess I don't like change very much and like the familiar.

Easter is obviously a chance to unwind from work with the four day holiday (for many, no longer most) giving time to oneself as well as the opportunity to socialize with family and friends. To me it is not a celebration of Christ's life and death and life again or anything naff like that but at the same time I dislike that Easter is becoming more commercialised and less 'religious'. Good Friday is still the only day outside of Christmas Day that is a no-go zone for overt commercial activity. Easter Sunday, Waitangi Day and even half of Anzac Day has given way to this. I predict that the next commercial day to rival Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day and Halloween will be Easter Thursday. Maundy Thursday to the gloomy Scots and Anglicans, Easter or Holy Thursday is really a celebration of the Last Supper. Why marketers haven't properly latched onto this as a commercial opportunity mystifies me. Probably it has something to do with the word 'last' which sounds a bit daunting. The alternative 'maundy' doesn't have a lot of appeal either. If I was a marketer for the shoe industry I would arrange conferences and dinners around Easter Thursday with a 'Last' Supper theme. In general though the old Last Supper thing could be a novel way of having a party and seeing who was going to come along as Judas Iscariot. Cross gender people could obviously be St John

I hope that  it is just a scroll that Jesus is showing to St John

 and it would be fun seeing what apostles different people would choose as their avatar. I'm sure that Richard (of RBB) could obsess on this for many Posts. I don't know about the foot-washing ritual though unless foot-fetishists want to get involved.

Easter, when I was quite young was a mixture of the sacred and the profane. My mother was Catholic and we were brought up in the ridiculous Catholic religion, attending primary, intermediate and secondary schools staffed by sociopaths  religious nuns, brothers and priests. We were taught that sin is everywhere and that not going to church on Sunday was a mortal one and should we die on a Monday without having attended mass on Sunday then it was straight to hell. We had to regularly go to confession and, as just little kids we didn't have a lot of interesting sins so had to make up a lot .

SEE HERE


My dad was a Methodist, or at least his predecessors were having come from the West coast of Scotland. He 'converted' to Catholicism to marry my mother but really, 5 years active duty in WW2 must have knocked any belief in god and religion out of him.
Still we went through the motions, or did until we could think for ourselves (I was about 13 when I renounced it) and so I was an Altar Boy at primary school, attending Friday Benediction service and the odd Sunday mass dressed up in my black cassock and white surplice looking angelic.

The funny thing is, when watching various American gangster films the worst characters would confess to having been altar boys when they were young.

It was a dabble really and although Mum would call us 'Heathens' for missing church every now and then (Dad was a permanent 'Heathen' because he never went) we weren't whipped along to all of the weird and ridiculous rituals and services that other kids were. At primary and intermediate school, some classmates would be attending vigils, station of the cross marathons and daily mass at 6AM during periods in the church calendar (Lent and others - ask Second Fiddle he will know). They were generally sons of Dutch and Polish immigrants whose families were very religious. Why this was so given the horrors they escaped from during and after WW2 is anyone's guess. Escapism of the mind and psyche I suppose. I never understood this and at age 8 or 9 the thought of crawling out of a warm bed at 5.30 gave me the 'horrors'.

I guess what I am saying is that regardless of the underlying senselessness of religious ceremonies there is history, community and comfort in them that we should not be hell-bent on eradicating. I think I would rather have ritual and ceremony even if the foundations are spurious than strident and aggressive commercial advertising and activity. Give me a church service any day over Briscoes 'sale' or Ray's discount tyre offerings.