Easter Monday(April Fool’s Day)

Greetings. How was everyone’s weekend? How was Good Friday/Easter Sunday? We don’t really celebrate Easter around here. Mainly because we’re not religious, and I feel that celebrating Easter with ham and scalloped potatoes and jovial merrymaking isn’t the right thing to do when you aren’t doing it for real. I don’t want to be piggybacking off someone’s religious holiday just as an excuse to eat a well prepared meal. I don’t want to give the wrong impression to some super religious person, who then starts grilling me on Bible stuff. I’ll look stupid, they’ll look stupid, and we’ll all walk away disappointed.

As a kid we did celebrate Easter. I mean, my parents weren’t religious either even though they did go to church as kids. As grownups my dad realized he was around enough hypocrites everyday at work. He didn’t need to add one more day to that(I know not all religious folks are hypocrites…just most I run into.) I know mom and dad did the whole ham and fixings for both their parents and for my brother and I. When you’re little any day that involves grandparents coming over to eat with you and possibly bring a gift is worth celebrating. And there’d be a basket with a bunch of candy and maybe a toy or stuffed animal sitting in the living room for me in the morning. So I was in.

When our kids were little we did the same thing, filled a basket with candy and some kind of toy and set it out in the living room for them when they woke up. I never really found it fun, more like a weird obligation. “Well, grandma and grandpa are doing this so I guess we should, too.” The kids found the religious aspect as interesting as we did, but they played along for the prizes.

Eventually even my mom just didn’t see a point in doing a big meal, especially after my grandma died in 2011. I think the last Easter we celebrated with baskets, ham, and an Easter egg hunt was 2010, the last Easter my grandma was alive. There’s a picture of that day that sits on our piano in the dining room. A snapshot of generations of celebratory obligation and of grandma Ruthie’s last Easter. It was a beautiful day, and the kids were happy. My wife and I were going through growing pains as a nearly 15 year married couple and parents to three still pretty young children(6, 7, and 10 respectively.) But in that picture everything seemed good and fine.

Nowadays I’m finding most religious holidays hard to get into. Granted, that’s pretty much just two holidays. I can’t remember if we even put up a Christmas tree this year. Christmas was only four months ago, yet I can’t picture a Christmas tree in the living room this past year. I know I rearranged the living room so we could at least put the tree up, but whether that happened or not I couldn’t tell you.

A lot has happened over the last six months, and none of it involved the Old or New Testament.

My favorite holiday to celebrate would be Thanksgiving. It’s not a religious one, though I know there are religious connotations involved sometimes. It’s mainly just a day to be thankful for what you have and who you’re with, and that’s the kind of holiday I can get behind. Because I am thankful for those things. Thankful for where I’m at and who I’m there with. And of course it’s by far the best holiday meal. I like that Thanksgiving spread; meat, starches, veggies cooked into casseroles, rolls, and of course the pies. What’s not to love? And besides that one prayer that that one relative wants to put at the beginning of the meal like some wizard casting a spell, it’s relatively religious-free. It’s just a day to be thankful for the good things, and for expandable waists in pants.

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My wife was still nursing a pulled back muscle, but we drove into town on Saturday for a lovely outdoor walk. It would go from blue skies to overcast skies every few minutes, but the temp was perfect and it did us some good to get out into the fresh air and explore a bit. I know they’re calling for some light snow showers on Wednesday, so it was nice being outside among the mild temps, sidewalks, and the frigid looking Center Lake. We got home and I showered and then did some painting. Finished up the latest one, too. Felt good. I’m finding great joy getting lost in a painting. It’s very meditative. The outside world quiets in those moments I’m essentially doodling with paints.

If I had a church, I guess it’d be the church of creativity.

Creating things is where I most feel that spirituality. Pulling things from nowhere and making something from it. Taking brain waves and ideas that are rummaging around in your head and making them physical, tactile, real. That’s the closest I feel that I get to the meaning of it all. If there’s some divine intervention going on, it’s ideas turning into reality. Writing and recording songs, painting images and designs, or sitting down and turning a story that’s been haunting your head into typed words. That’s all the divine intervention I need.

I’m not belittling someone else’s relationship with God; be it one of the many flavors of Christianity, Judaism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Islam, Hindus, or some new religion I’m not familiar with. If some sort of religious process, belief, ritual, or life framework keeps you on the straight and narrow and gives you the tools to be a better person or just content in your own life, then go for it. I’ll just leave this chunk of advice, not everyone that doesn’t believe what you believe are looking to be converted. So be happy in your own world and enjoy those Sunday sermons or whatever it is you do to worship God, but don’t be pushy about.

So enjoy your Easter Monday, or April Fool’s Day. Whichever one you relate to more.