Ah Easter...springtime and church, what can I say bad about Easter? Oh, ye of little faith.
Now before anyone crucifies me...HA I crack myself up....(oh a two for pun, crack...egg...Jesus...crucify...get it?) let me paint a background picture (again) for you. I would consider myself Agnostic or a Fallen Catholic if you will.
I was raised Catholic, not strict Catholicism but more of the "we need to play by the rules for the important holidays" Catholic. For those of you who have never been to a Catholic church service, here's how it goes:
Stand, sit, stand, fake singing, kneel, sit, stand, kneel, eat Jesus, drink blood, kneel, fake praying, sit, stand, sit, stand, shake hands, sit, stand and finally fake singing again. You do this for a little over a hour every Sunday and longer on the "important holidays".
I do have to be thankful for my mom, she only made me go to church on the "important holidays" i.e. Easter, Christmas, weddings and funerals. However, I was made to go through CCD (still not sure what it means) in order to get my confirmation.In a nutshell, I am a firm believer that you don't have to spend your time in a building to be a good person and I do believe in God, just not one particular religion. Going to church every Sunday makes you a better person like standing in a garage makes you a car. So with that being said, there are a few things that confuse me about Easter.
1. Why is it on a different date each year? Christmas is on the same date every year, don't they kind of go hand in hand? I mean Jesus rose on the third day....but the third day of....what? It's like the high priests of religion throw darts at March and April and what ever Sunday the dart lands closest to is Easter Sunday.
2. Where the hell did the Easter Bunny come from? Who created him? Was he there when Jesus rose? All I can picture is the bunny from Monty Python and the Holy Grail guarding the cave. Was he put there by the Jews to stop Jesus from getting out?
3. What's the correlation between dying for our sins and plastic eggs filled with money and candy? We should just take strawberry jam and spread that all over the lawn and have a Jesus Hunt, first one to find the hidden cross wins. Oh wait, I got it, he died, so we dye eggs...die...dye? See the similarity?
4. Don't you think they could have called the day Jesus died something better than Good? Again, how do they know he died on a Friday? I mean, people call the Friday after Thanksgiving Black Friday, that sounds more like a day of death. Maybe a switch should be made. I am going to tell people that I hope they have a better Good Friday than Jesus did.
5. Ash Wednesday...this I don't get at all. This goes back to my thought of archaic practices. My mom passed away and she was cremated....I sure as hell am not going to smear her ashes on my forehead. What are the ashes from that they are using in the present? I highly doubt they are Jesus's actual ashes, but wait he wasn't cremated according to legend, he was buried in a cave after being crucified. OK, my head is going to blow up on this one....
6. Why do schools have Good Friday off when they want to remove God from their buildings? I just heard a story this morning on the radio about a town in Massachusetts that wants to change the lyrics to Lee Greenwood's God Bless the USA to We Love the USA. But this same school takes Good Friday off...WTF, you can't have your Cadbury creme egg and eat it to!
So now that I've either pissed off all my Catholic friends or made people worry that I am going to go on an Easter bender, I would like to wish everyone a Happy Easter and I hope you spend it....well...doing whatever you do for Easter.
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| Happy Easter everyone! |
I grew up in a strict religious family but I agree with what you said above. I don't believe the meetings or all the showy presentations of faith are necessary. You can show what type of person you are without all of this.
ReplyDeleteI am so going to tell people to have a better Good Friday than Jesus did now. I know it is wrong on so many levels but I think it's too funny to pass up! I choked on my soda when I read that and will bet you that most people wouldn't even get it anyway. I laughed throughout this post but have to say thanks Kevin because you now have my head spinning here... LOL
ReplyDeleteI was raised Roman Catholic and as an adult am an "important holiday" mass goer like the good Italian girl I am but now I have a few questions and a few answers for you...
Ash Wednesday is 40 days before Easter so whose ashes are we putting on our foreheads anyway??? Did they predict His crucification? Obviously not so what is the deal with Ash Wednesday when you think about it?!?!
I know, from being a history minor in college, that they decided once upon a time that Easter would be on the first Sunday after a certain full moon in Spring because that is when everything took place. There is more to that but I don't remember all of the details. I'm confused though as to why we don't we celebrate it on the actual day of His resurrection and on the same day every year as we do his birth? By the way... He rose on the third day after his crucifixion.
The Easter Bunny being associated with Jesus' death is a long, college degree trip through history all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia, three thousand years ago, but I won't bore you with all of that. Basically it is believed that hares/rabbits were associated with death and fertility and over time the whole thing morphed into what we know today. Just thought I'd show off some of my smarts here and answer your question at the same time. tee hee
Oh, and the whole egg thing dates back to ancient Mesopotamia as well and eggs were a traditional symbol of rebirth and basically the same thing as above it morphed into the commercialized "thing" that it is today. Okay enough of my history lesson already right?
You forgot about Lent though... Why do we give up something for 40 days anyway? I have NEVER understood the whole Lent thing but EVERY year I give up something because that is what we are "suppose" to do!
I'm glad you stopped by the #BigTopBlogParty and linked up this post today. I LOVE posts like these that are thought provoking and entertainingly funny at the same time! Sorry for the blog post of a comment but just had so much to say about this post. I hope you take it as a compliment as it is intended not as an annoyance and that you get my smart ass remarks as well.
Wishing you a fabulous week and a very Hoppy Easter!
Much love,
Lysa xx
Easter was tied to Passover in some fashion, which was tied to the Equinox. So it changed. But in the 300's, some Christians decided that the Jews weren't determining Passover correctnly, so they gave the job of determining when Lent and easter were for that year to the archbishop of Alexandria.
ReplyDeleteFor years, the archbishop of Alexandria was Athanasius, who was usually in hiding from a group of heretics called the Arians. But he'd still issue these things he called "Festal Letters" so that everyone would know when Lent and Holy Week wiould be.
I've been waiting to use that knowledge for 3 years. I'm sure such a dry answer undermines the rhetorical wit of your point here, but... I got to talk about Athanasius!
I also grew up Catholic. Although, we HAD to go to church every single Sunday. I had to go through confirmation and all that jaz. I haven't been to church since my mom died in 2011. I was very fit when I was young with all the movement we had to do during mass. I've also wondered what the deal is with the Easter Bunny, but I guess not desperate enough not to Google it. First time here.. great post.
ReplyDeleteWhat lysa said and it is Good Friday because it is the day Jesup died for our sins, so it was a good day in that sense. anyway I am a weekly church-going Catholic but I still enjoyed the post. I think the biggest problem with our world is that people choose to get offended by things!
ReplyDeleteI am catholic, I enjoyed the humor in this post greatly and was educated by some of the comments!
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for sharing such a beautiful article.
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