Holidays

April 13, 2009:

Yesterday was a lovely Easter. Up early as usual and put together some little plastic easter eggs with jelly beans and hid them around the living room. After breakfast the kids got to run around and find them and eat a bunch of candy and the ears off of their chocolate bunnies. Then we went outside and put up the swingset. It looked gorgeous outside, with a clear blue sky and the snow finally off the ground. Problem was it was about 42 degrees. So we had hats and mittens and coats on while putting it up, but the kids hardly seemed to notice. After a couple of hours of raking I finally worked up enough of a sweat to take my hat off.

To top off the day I bought tickets online to fly out to WA next week! Can’t beat the prices right now, that’s for sure! I don’t know if anything will pan out with the job out there, but it made sense to not wait another four months to figure it out when we’ve been planning this trip for so long. And besides that, unless I travel out there and back before Elayna’s 2nd birthday, I’d have to buy another ticket for her. This way she gets to sit on my lap for 8 hours and I don’t have to pay another $240.

So on to the adventure! First thing to do: go buy a portable DVD player and some new kid movies!

I need to get my butt to the gym and hit the tanning bed a few times, but I also want to spend as much time as possible with Colby before I leave. There has been so much going on and his trip to WA and then he was sick for so long, and even now spends every chance he can catching up on his sleep. We need a night out. Or a night in, with kids who go to bed on time and actually sleep. Saturday morning he and I were up before 4 and after having our coffee we actually went and curled up on the couch together and fell back to sleep for 2 hours. It was sweet. And so rare.

So about Easter: why is it that we celebrate Christmas but not Easter? It’s one of those things that is frowned upon by the church and most conservative Adventists do not celebrate Easter. Is it because of the Ham? ha ha. Or just because it’s always on a Sunday and we don’t want to look like we’re keeping Sunday as a Holy Day – ever! I know that Easter is a pagan holiday that was relabeled and part of the concession of the church back in the days of early Christianity, but that is the same story to be told of Christmas. Yet Christmas is acceptable and Easter is not. Sure, it has some questionable icons attached to it – like bunnies and eggs, obvious relics of the original pagan roots in the celebration of the goddess of fertility. Christmas has Christmas trees, Santa Claus, and the giving of gifts to one another to overshadow it’s real meaning.

When I was growing up I only asked about this once or twice. In general, I think what you don’t grow up with you don’t miss. I never felt I was missing out on anything when it came to Easter or Halloween. But now as an adult, I DO miss having somewhere in my life this celebration of Christ's resurrection that most Christians have on Easter.

I think when I was younger I once made the comparison of Easter to Christmas and I think the basic reasoning for not moving into the celebration of Easter at that point was something like, “Why start now when we know it is rooted in a pagan holy day?”. That was around the time that the conservative movement in our church began to push for the removal of the Christmas tree in our church and many families decided to no longer participate in Christmas based on its origins. We were one of those families. That was a miserable year. Especially for my mom. In a typical year, she begins playing Christmas music in, oh, September or so. Whenever the first snow on the mountains is seen. That year there was no Christmas music, no Christmas cookies, and no Christmas tree. There was no spark in my mother’s eyes, no laughter on Christmas eve.

About 9 o’clock that night it finally dawned on me that there really was going to be no Christmas that year. I wondered if this was how it was going to be from here on out. And then, on a spur of the moment decision, since my dad already had the week off, he decided to take us all to Arizona to visit my grandparents. Hallelujah! Laughter rang out, tears flowed, and the car was packed in an hour. My mother was a woman on a mission, and we left before midnight.

We managed to sneak in a trip to Disneyland that week, too, and that was a lot of fun! It was the only Christmas present we got! That was back in the day before car seat laws were so strict. Good thing, too. According to today’s laws, I would have been in a booster seat until sometime toward the end of 6th grade, when I finally hit 60 lbs. On the ride to California, I spent a good deal of time riding in a bed on top of the suitcases in the back window of the minivan. Ah, the good old days!