UNAVOIDABLE

I don’t spend much time thinking about calendar anomalies but today it’s unavoidable. It is the 1st of April and it’s Easter. Wikipedia provides some backstory on April Fools but the special day for tricksters and their pranks muddies up quickly. Chaucer gets some credit as he once alluded to the day as March 32 and in 1857 someone printed up tickets to the Tower Of London for The Washing Of The Lions. Easter on the other hand is Western Religion to the 9’s. Regardless of what you actually believe, if you identify aa a Christian it’s a high holy day and you jump through at least some of the sanctified hoops. In any case, it’s one of those 3 or 4 days a year when families come together, break bread and renew tribal bonds. 

This year the calendar has funneled both holidays into one cup, like chocolate with milk and it’s so, so easy to stir them together. After some stirring; three days-dead as a door nail, the man sits up and with a smug look on his face and says, “April Fool.” I go to church if you want to call it that. Devout, Big-B believers don’t think much of our tradition but that’s about them. We Humanists have taken our Christian, or Jewish roots so far to the left we can’t remember who “HE” is. In a sound bite; all religion is rooted in myth and expressed through metaphor. You take from it what you can, live as best you can but do no harm. In other words, be nice, treat people the way you want to be treated, all people, everyone. Beyond that, nature is more holy than anything people can conjure up. At my church today, Three-days-dead-April-Fool will not go unnoticed.

This afternoon I’ll be with family, tribal ties and more food than appetite. We will all stand reverently behind our chairs as we receive a resurrection sermonette. It has to be long enough that people will wish it were over but sincere enough, nobody groans. I’ll be the only one unbowed and open eyed open except for my granddaughter. She checks everyone else to see who is sufficiently humble with me being the obvious culprit I’ll wink at her and she’ll wink back. If the righteous groveling goes on too long we might make faces. But sooner or later hunger overcomes hyperbole. We’ve been doing that several years and I don’t want to disappoint her. Happy Easter and April Fools.