Ponderings of the Season

Easter’s a bit of a schizophrenic holiday, when you think about it.  On the one hand, it’s Ēostre (sometimes called Ostara): a festival of fertility, associated with eggs and rabbits.  On the other hand, it’s Pascha: the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.  I suppose these two are vaguely related; there’s possibly some correlation between the rebirth of the world in spring after the deadness of winter and the rebirth of Christ after being more literally dead for three days.  Perhaps that’s why the early Christians absconded with the established pagan holiday (where “pagan” here has the traditional Christian meaning of “non-Christian infidel”).  Early Christians were good at absconding with holidays.  One of the reasons they were so successful.  Sort of like cuckoos.

Anyhow, in our house, we definitely celebrate Ēostre more so than Pascha.  No offense to our Christrian brethren and sistren; we’re just more into the whole stuffed bunnies and plastic eggs full of candy thing.  The kids dig getting Easter baskets.  Woke me up at the ungodly hour of 9am to gush over their candy and books.  And the stuffed bunny as big as my daughter’s head.

Now, my children are 15½, 8, and 2.  Which makes hiding Easter eggs a challenge.  This year I hid them in 3 distinct groups: stupidly easy (like, if you’re not careful you might trip over them), moderately tricky (like, you’ll have to work a bit to get these), and heinously evil (like, good luck pal).  We let the sprite out first to recover all she could, then the tadpole followed to find what he could, then the demonspawn, playing cleanup.  I hid 58 eggs (who knows what happened to the other two?) and we recovered 57.  The other one will probably sit out there until next Easter.  Or until the ants find it.  Of course, at that point, it’ll be easy to locate: just follow the line of hyperactive sugar-junkie ants.  So that’ll be nice.

Other than that, it’s a nice lazy day.  The pool is finally warm enough to get in, so I’m sure there will be some water activities later in the afternoon.  And lots of jellybeans and chocolate to make my children impossible to live with.  Hopefully there’ll be some reading too, at some point along the way: books for Easter is a family tradition that we fervently uphold, even though none of the kids seem as interested as we were at their ages.  The youngest, perhaps.  She’ll bring you a book and demand you read it over and over again.  If she’s in the mood.

So that’s my day today.  Hopefully all you reading this will have a lovely Easter as well, or whatever springtime celebration you favor.  Next week may bring us a fuller post.  Or perhaps not.  But, as the world is being reborn after the dying days of winter, so too may this blog see a rebirth of creativity.  Then again, I live in California, where “winter” means it got down to the 50s a couple of times.  So it’s not like I have any excuses anyway.  But that’s why I tell you not to read this blog.  Or one of the many reasons, at any rate.  But you’re very persistent, apparently.  I’ve always admired that about you, you know.  It’s one of your better qualities.  Keep up the good work.