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A rental-car guy told me this morning that today is Good Friday. An hour later an ex-girlfriend told me she's visiting her parents for Passover tomorrow. If not for them I would be thinking about this weekend like any other. No holiday seems very important these days. Religious ones especially. At best, I'm guessing, Easter Sunday is regarded by regular Joes in the same light as President's Day and Martin Luther King Day. If that. I remember giving a damn about Easter when I was a kid. I played a Roman soldier in a little Easter Sunday pageant in my local Episcopalian church when I was ten or eleven. I hunted for chocolate eggs when I was younger. It all fades away.

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Posted by Jeffrey Wells on April 10, 2009 at 10:32 AM

comment #1

Sabina E says ...

When I was a wee lass, they had us do Easter egg hunts at our deaf school. I had *no* idea it was a Catholic holiday until much later in my teenaged years.

Posted by Sabina E at April 10, 2009 11:10 AM

comment #2

Deathtongue_Groupie says ...

Always amusing to hear Jeff try to guess what "regular Joes" think.

Posted by Deathtongue_Groupie at April 10, 2009 11:11 AM

comment #3

BurmaShave says ...

We Episcopalians always fade.

Posted by BurmaShave at April 10, 2009 11:18 AM

comment #4

MilkMan says ...

The sooner human civilization enters a post-religion stage the better. I know it won't happen in my lifetime but it would be nice. The eradication of religious thought and practice is one of the last steps we have to take in order to evolve as a species. Easier said than done, I guess. And what should we relace religion with? Nothing. This will create a vacuum and who knows what it will get filled with. Maybe something just as bad. But it couldn't get any worse than it already is.

Posted by MilkMan at April 10, 2009 11:22 AM

comment #5

DarthCorleone says ...

My family's Easter tradition has always been Albanian egg fights.

Posted by DarthCorleone at April 10, 2009 11:22 AM

comment #6

MikeSchaeferSF says ...

You must mean non-religious "regular joes", since Catholics (I'm an ex) and Protestants, particularly the Fundies, are pretty heavily into the Good Friday/Easter Sunday thing. Perhaps you remember a little movie called Passion of the Christ? Made a few bucks a couple years back.

Posted by MikeSchaeferSF at April 10, 2009 11:26 AM

comment #7

Rich S. says ...

"I played a Roman soldier in a little Easter Sunday pageant in my local Episcopalian church when I was ten or eleven."

Why did I immediately flash on the scene of Alex reading the Bible in A Clockwork Orange?

Posted by Rich S. at April 10, 2009 11:28 AM

comment #8

mccool says ...

Milkman, you think that without religion mankind won't find or invent other reasons to wage war against and suppress one another??

You can't be that naive or bitter...at least it doesn't come across in most of your other comments.

Posted by mccool at April 10, 2009 11:38 AM

comment #9

George Prager says ...

When I was about - years-old, I went to Burger King with my best friend for lunch. (Yes, we were allowed to go to Burger King by ourselves). It was Good Friday. Being good little Catholic boys, we listened to our mothers and ordered Fish sandwiches (at the time, Burger King called them "Whalers"). A teenager was on line behind us. When it was his turn to order, he ordered a Whopper. We scolded him. "You can't get a Whopper! It's Good Friday!" We said. He looked at us like we were from Mars (we were) and sneered. "Who give's a shit?" He said.

When I moonlighted at Starbucks I used to make Marshmallow Peepachinos.

Posted by George Prager at April 10, 2009 11:41 AM

comment #10

MilkMan says ...

I didn't say that, McCool. Humans will always find reasons for slaughtering each other. Religion is not the only reason. But it is the oldest. And we should know better by now. Accepting that religion, as a belief system, as a means of tricking ourselves into think that we are able to transcend our decaying bodies, no longer works would go a long way towards improving our predicament. I don't see how that is either naive or bittter. I already said that I am assuming that the eradication of religion is a pipe dream, didn't I. I'm just thinking out loud. Hypothesizing. You know?

Posted by MilkMan at April 10, 2009 11:57 AM

comment #11

bondjamesbond says ...

It's not that religion must disappear for mankind to evolve, but that religion itself must evolve. As of now, it is a largely ignored triviality, an incubator for hypocrisy. And when the rejoinder, "Practice what you preach," came into currency and was so on point they couldn't squirm around it, professional religionists created the "belief-based" cult. Forget good behavior, ethics, and that lot, and just believe in this or that, which is a recipe for mass delusion. But mass delusion exists everywhere even without the assistance of phony religion.

As the word means "to bind together again" we ask, "Bind together with what?" Clearly, with our Source. Having gotten lost in the forest of self-created stuff, human beings inevitably develop values counter to their ultimate best interests. "Where did we go wrong?" or "Why are we suffering?" are other useful questions and they have to be addressed without reference to the habitual answers in order to actually deal with them. This could broadly be considered the purview of authentic religion, and it's not mass market. It's not business, Sonny, it's personal.

Posted by bondjamesbond at April 10, 2009 12:29 PM

comment #12

Josh Massey says ...

"But it couldn't get any worse than it already is."

That shows a stunning lack of imagination.

Posted by Josh Massey at April 10, 2009 1:11 PM

comment #13

mccool says ...

milk, this is a conversation over a medium that strains good communication. Wasn't attacking your ideas, was questioning/challenging, something that would come across naturally in a f2f chat. It's hard sometimes to tell when someone is simply ruminating or proselytizing...

Posted by mccool at April 10, 2009 1:25 PM

comment #14

MilkMan says ...

It never gets any worse than it already is, Josh Massey. It's always as bad as it can get. To pretend that anyone can see into the future and envision what the world will be is one of the chief defects of all great works of science fiction, along with one of its strengths. Which is why 2001 is the greatest work of science fiction ever produced. All human behavior in that movie runs along the same continuum, which seems to me to be most aligned with how the world actually seems to work. If I thought about how things could get worse I think it would lend me to feel nostalgia for the present-soon-to-be-past. I try and harbor the least amount of illusions about the human experiment.

Posted by MilkMan at April 10, 2009 1:38 PM

comment #15

nemo says ...

How many Episcopalians does it take to change a light bulb?

Two. One to phone the electrician, and one to mix the martinis.

Posted by nemo at April 10, 2009 1:44 PM

comment #16

DUDEMAN says ...

This holiday is very screwy for me. I have to come in for a half day to do 20 minutes worth of work. I call it Kill Jesus Day. (Yes I am a bit of an asshole. Why)?

It's also a good excuse to wear my "Jesus did it for the chicks" t-shirt.

http://www.tshirthell.com/

Posted by DUDEMAN at April 10, 2009 2:14 PM

comment #17

Ryansi51 says ...

Dude!! Man!!!

that t-shirt is aweso- stupid.

Posted by Ryansi51 at April 10, 2009 2:52 PM

comment #18

Gaydos says ...

"Well, the last thing I remember
before I stripped and kneeled
Was that trainload of fools bogged down
in a magnetic field
A gypsy with a broken flag and a flashing ring
He said, Son, this ain't a dream no more
it's the real thing.

Senor, senor, you know their hearts here
are hard as leather
Well, give me a minute, let me get it together
I just gotta pick myself up off the floor
I'm ready when you are, senor."

HAPPY EASTER!!!!!!!!

Posted by Gaydos at April 10, 2009 5:44 PM

comment #19