Another Easter come and gone.
I like Easter because of all the major holidays I think it is the least big of a deal. Thanksgiving and Christmas are typically these big family events with big meals and a lot of tradition tied in. There are routines on these major end of the year holidays that take up your entire day. Family and turkey and football and schedule present-opening. Easter is mostly for little kids. Baskets and egg-painting and all of that good chocolate bunny kind of stuff. Beyond that, I mean, what do you really do on Easter?
Also, Easter feels sort of thrown together, you know, with the whole nonsensical bunny rabbit and painted eggs. It's a lot of imagery coming out of left field that, even as a kid, doesn't make a whole lot of sense. As an adult the whole thing is pretty ingrained, and while it doesn't cause any confusion or raise any questions, it is still impossible to puzzle out logically.
Here's a connection I never made before:
Easter, a Christian holiday, happens in the spring, a time of fertility, which was widely recognized by the pagans. And what is a universal symbol of fertility? That's right: bunnies!
I'm not 100% on all the details, and I kind of don't care. But it seems to me that Christianity said something like "Hey, as a compromise, how about you come over to our religion and we'll incorporate your traditional symbols?"
This is similar to the whole "Winter Solstice vs. Christmas" thing. Where, you know, Jesus's birthday got moved around on the calendar just a little bit to compete with the pagan Winter Solstice.
I don't want to condescend to you like you've never realized this stuff before, I just think it's interesting and I had to bust out a blog real fast in the dwindling hours of Easter.
In other news, I shaved my winter beard today and Lindsay took a series of pictures that led up to the final shave. They feature me with a goatee, a handlebar mustache, and a regular mustache. I laughed a lot.
Now my face is smooth and Easter is over. What adventures will tomorrow hold?
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