Confessions of an Easter Crank

As requested by the lovely lady from Texas in one of her guises of @TheMissionalist, here are my thoughts on why I was glad to be done with Easter yesterday evening.

1. Sick kid who really wanted to have a fun Easter, but was feeling lousy – not much fun.
2. Family. Many people share my feelings about family and holidays. It can be difficult, especially in theologically diverse families. I am not the only one who has that one relative who makes every gathering a chore to endure, but I do have one. That one special person who makes you smile though gritted teeth and think to yourself that you really do uphold the worth and dignity of EVERY person regardless of how you are feeling at the moment. My feeling is that you have the opportunity to contribute and the right to criticize, but you can’t have just the latter. (Letting out that deep breath now.)

Now, for the theology. I’ve written about this before, but Easter as a holiday is meaningless for me. As a non-theist, I don’t celebrate the risen Christ. Participating in Easter festivities makes me feel dishonest and I hate being dishonest with people. My family of origin believes in the literal resurrection story so I know that the remembrance and celebration of said story holds significant meaning for them. For me, it means extra shopping and cooking I have to do. I guess it just tugs me back to feeling like I have to pretend to have a faith I don’t have in order to make them happy, and I won’t do that anymore. I don’t want to be disrespectful to their faith, but I can’t share it with them either.

Being post-Christian, I don’t like the whole Easter story. The theme of re-birth and renewal is lost on me because what I see is a celebration that your leader was tortured to death. That is not so festive for me. When I was a conservative Christian, Easter had meaning: Christ’s sacrifice bought my eternal life. But if you don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus and you don’t believe in penal substitution, then what is the whole point? Without a literal resurrection Easter just seems gory.

Sarah at Ernie Bufflo writes here about what Good Friday means to her as a liberal Christian so I know that there are other ways to view Easter from a liberal perspective. I recommend her post if you want a more uplifting version of Holy Week than mine. I guess I could sum this whole post up by saying that I would be happy to ignore Easter altogether and wish the faithful well as I do with many holidays that are not part of my faith tradition, but celebrating it part of the way, without any faith behind it feels wrong.

Belated Easter Thoughts of a Non-theist

What is a non-theist to do with Easter?

I thought about this a lot last weekend. I love to celebrate Christmas, but it is different. While undeniably a religious holiday, Christmas has also become a secular one. The closeness to the Winter Solstice makes the festivities go down even easier, but Easter is another matter.

Easter is not secularized or separate from the sacred enough for me to kid myself into thinking I am doing anything other than celebrating the resurrection of Christ. I would be quite happy to let the day go completely un-differentiated, but canceling the Easter egg hunt and Easter dinner with my family would not make me highly regarded in their eyes. It might be fair to say it would make me a jerk.

Easter is not close enough to a sabbat for me to get my pagan on about it. There is almost always still snow on the ground this far north, so celebrating the coming of spring is more ceremonial than anything else. So how'bout it? What do the rest of you do. Any of you non-Christian or post-Christian UU's have any suggestions? How do you frame Easter? To observe or not to observe, what do you do?

Easter Anniversary

It was two years ago on Easter Sunday I realized how toxic and pointless it was to continue to attend church with my parents. For years I had been an agnostic, but I still attended the Assembly of God church I grew up in to placate my mother. I pretended to still have a Christian faith so as not to exacerbate her depression. Sundays were always a bad day as I would come home feeling stressed out and cranky with my husband and girls. Not the role model I wanted to be.

That Easter was miserable, but it made me realize that I am not able to make any other people happy, especially Mom. If I am not capable of making her happy, it follows that it is not my job or my responsibility to do so. That may seem pretty obvious, but it was one of the biggest "lightbulb" moments of my life.

I'm not sure which was the bigger relief, the lifting of that duty to keep Mom happy, or the release from pretending I fit into a community where I knew I didn't anymore. I know that part of me will always be shaped by evangelical-type thinking, and not all of that is bad. But for all that they are a loving community, they still want to bring you over to thinking just like them. I am deeply appreciative of the UU's and pagans I've met in this past year who don't want to judge or convert me. Their acceptance has been wonderful, like something I didn't know I missed. I am deeply grateful.

Tomorrow I will take my family over to my parents' house after they get home from church. There will be an egg hunt and a ham dinner, just like always. The difference is that I won't feel like I'm suffocating anymore.