I REALLY HATE EASTER

I have never liked Easter. As a child, things always went wrong at Easter. Indeed, it’s no exaggeration to say I truly loath Easter. Of all the Christian holidays, it is the one most transparently stolen from Mithras or his like. Too obviously a purloined pagan springtime fertility fest. But I don’t want to go into any reruns of South Park or Eddie Izzard about the totally implausible incorporation into violent Christian sacrifice of marshmallow chickens, chocolate eggs, the Warrens of Golgotha, or the Bunny Who Should Be Pope.
I won’t even speculate why, when alcohol is a major built-in element of Christmas, there’s no tradition of drinking at Easter. Not even a clean Bombay martini to hail the lengthening day. Maybe the pagan’s ran out of booze by the end of February. Maybe that’s why Easter is so miserable when it should be a feast of optimism and joy that we made it through another winter. Of course, the Christians removing the sex from the fertility, and substituting fear, agony, and death didn’t help.
As an English schoolboy, I was force fed all the crap about Jesus saving us from our sins, and guaranteeing our eternal salvation by coming back from the dead after three days. Even as young as age seven, I found it all extremely and unbelievably depressing. (And there’s nothing more pathetic than a depressed seven year-old.) Easter totally convinced me of the absolute need for a separation of church and state. Every year the horrible weekend rolled around. First we had to go through the dreadful Thursday night with the weird Da Vinci meal, and then Jesus being ratted-out by various disciples like a lost sequence from Godfather II, and taken downtown by the Roman gestapo for all that Mel Gibson torture and barbed fishhook whips, while debate over jurisdiction fight ping-ponged between the Roman Gov and the Sanhedrin. To paraphrase Bob, the trial was bad enough, but the hideous execution was ten times worse.
I made the mistake quite early in life (although it was more on account of Spartacus than Jesus) of discovering that crucifixion was not a tidy matter of blood and iron nails, but horrendously slow asphyxiation, fighting for every dying breath. I was well aware why traditional vampires feared crosses. They scared the shit out of me.
And then it was Easter day. No presents, no big dinner, and, in the story, Jesus came out of the lousy cave, but even I, as a very small boy, could see that he was by no means quite right. Hell, he wasn’t even as robust as Dracula in a sequel. He kinda faded in and faded out, and I knew it was some supernatural confidence trick like ectoplasm. I guess it was the weird, fucked-up Easters of my childhood that really laid the foundation for my grown-up wish that the Rapture would move its lazy ass and get here so we can be rid of all the troublemaking born-again assholes, their spread-eagled deity, and their singular bloody piety. Let the Beltane fires burn and freedom ring. Yes, my friends, I really hate Easter.

But click here for Johnny Cash anyway.

The secret word is Disbelief