So today is Easter, another day that is just another day to me, as are all religious holidays regardless of the religion. I just don't do religion and I soundly rejected the Judeo/Christian Abrahamic versions over a period of about 15 years. Rejected Christianity by my early-20s, Judaism by my mid-30s, educated myself right out of the dogma when I became interested in the origins and evolutions of religion and religious mythology and then theosophy and even the woo woo New Age stuff. I find more to like about Buddhism or Taoism or even paganism. Probably pantheism comes closest to my simple, but difficult to express, understanding.
But Easter was a big deal at our house growing up, at least when we kids were young. We would dye eggs, have an easter egg hunt, Bluebird Circle Easter baskets (proceeds benefit the Texas Children's Hospital),
the decorated hollow sugar eggs with the little bunny scene inside
and of course candy and chocolate bunnies and jellybeans, our easter dresses that our mother made back then (though I don't know if she made those in the picture), and going to church with our calla lilies for the children's flower cross
that's me on the right with the frown
though our mother never did do an Easter lunch or dinner.
When I was about 6 or 7 we moved to a new house and that was the beginning of the end of Easter celebration at our house. A couple of years later my older sister thought she was too old for easter egg hunts by then and a year or two after that our parents bought a lot and had a beach house built on the west end of Galveston Island and from then on, Easter weekend was spent down there. The beach house also pretty much ended any family church attendance as well especially after the big family drama when I was about 13 or so. That changed everything about our home life.
We still dyed eggs for a couple of years after but that was the only nod to the holiday besides hanging plastic colored eggs from the branches of the half of a wicker christmas tree that hung on the wall above the fireplace at our house.
Nowadays I spend the quiet weekend like I do every religious holiday working in the yard, my go to 'religious' observance weather permitting, or a lazy day with a book, personal days off for me though now that we've retired from doing the etched glass commission work, every day is a personal day off and all my time is free time and yet I am just as busy as I've ever been.
So, yeah, time for me to go nurture and tend the new life springing from the earth, the real reason for the holiday that existed long before organized religion made claims and usurped the meaning.
Your Photo is perfect! Hilarious, little serious Ellen, life is not to be messed with right? Don't know what happened in your thirteenth year that altered your family but , yeah, thirteen is difficult to begin with without added trauma. Happy spring day to you!! Xx
ReplyDeleteI might have written about it before but my parents' best friends (whose daughter was my best friend), the husband was having an affair and when the wife found out he named my mother as the other woman, which she denied of course (says he named her because she knew who it really was which sounded like bullshit to me and everyone else). but they were shunned from their big social group, (only one couple stood by them) and it changed everything about their relationship with each other, their behavior, their social life and mine. They became people I didn't like very much. were impossible to please and had a very narrow category of people I could be friends with while they tried to reclaim their social position which they never did. it was pretty messy.
DeleteThank you for these memories and for being present today for the new life in your place on earth.
ReplyDeleteOf course, your photos brought back my own childhood memories of Easter. Your Easter frown is endearing. I remember the Easter that I asked to have my Easter basket filled with Planters salted cashew nuts instead of candy. My mother fulfilled my request and by Easter afternoon I had eaten every single cashew nut in the basket. I still have that Easter basket and keep measuring spoons and a container of salt in it.
You mentioned theosophy. My great grandfather on my mother's side spent some time as the president of the Theosophical Society in Boston! My grandmother and grandfather were married in a Unitarian Church in Boston in the early 1900s. When my grandparents moved to Hastings, Minnesota, they joined an Episcopal church. My father was raised Lutheran but my parents were married in an Episcopal church attended by movie stars in Beverly Hills. We belonged to Lutheran churches until I was 7 years old, at which time we settled into an Episcopal Church. My break with church-going began during my first year of college, having much to do with the fact that so many of my friends were Jewish or atheist or Buddhist. I had a friend who embraced Islam. I could no longer listen to sermons that judged my friends in a negative way. Much to my surprise, both of my parents stopped going to church not long after I refused to go to church.
I like what Emily wrote about her experience:
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –
I keep it, staying at Home –
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome –
Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I, just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton – sings.
God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’m going, all along.
How interesting about your connection to the Theosophical Society. They had a center in my neighborhood in the city but my life was so busy during that time that I never ever went and knocked on the door, just read a lot of their publications.
DeleteI love your expression in the pic. "Even then she knew.."
ReplyDeleteMy own holiday observances are more to honor people who believe in them than for my benefit. Also for my son who likes a bit of nostalgia.
even then. I think I was about 7 or 8 when I first starting questioning what I heard in church about god and original sin. new born babies? born sinners? just could not accept that.
DeleteThe observances I mean are strictly secular. Ornaments, Easter eggs, decorations, that kind of thing. Social links, rather than religious things.
DeleteI love that picture of you so much that I can't even tell you. And your little brother- he was NOT having it, was he?
ReplyDeleteI don't recall any Easters in my childhood that were traumatic, unlike Christmases. They were pretty simple and sweet generally, although I didn't buy into the religious aspect of it even then. I'm just not wired to be religious. In any way. I remember the first sort of New-Agey ceremony I ever went to. It was for a Baptism and it was in a Unitarian Church, I think, and the spirits of the four directions were invoked and I was like, "But. Wait. We are not native Americans. What the hell?"
I did refrain from using the term "Zombie Jesus" today. I try, you know.
zombie Jesus, oh god, I love that! I do invoke 'god' a lot but it's not the Judeo/Christian/Muslim god. the lighting is so weird in that picture, he looks like he has a milk mustache. my sister is the only one smiling but she is a pleaser, the good little first born. at least she was then. grew out of it like the rest of us. same here, Easters were all about fun and candy. Christmas was before the event. after that it was a trial. the whole religion thing, even when I was young, never really took in me.
DeleteThat picture is fabulous - I love everything about it. And you could have been a bridesmaid in my wedding - my attendants carried calla lilies. In December. Ha!
ReplyDeleteMy parents sent us to Sunday school, and were so grateful when we stayed for church (not often). They had a leisurely breakfast, read the paper, were happy.
ReplyDeleteGreat picture, you haven't changed that much.
ReplyDeleteChildhood Easter meant chocolate eggs and visiting my granny for afternoon coffee and cake with cream and playing with the cousins (all boys, so soccer on the lawn) in our Sunday's best clothing and getting it all messed up. I usually vomited in the car on the way home. Tears and a furiously chain-smoking mother brought the day to an end.
That photo is fab, although it set me thinking about calla lilies. I think I would have liked that. For me, the worst thing about Easter was -- is -- those darned Easter lilies. I don't think they smell good at all, and I'll even go out of my way to avoid the displays of them in the grocery stores. Bluebonnets and wisteria are far better in the scent department.
ReplyDeleteI love easter lilies and usually have a lot blooming right about now but the freeze took care of that for this year.
DeleteThat's a funny picture -- you look very unamused! And you even had to wear gloves!
ReplyDeleteyep, white gloves were de riguer for ladies back then.
DeleteI recognized you at once in that photograph, even before I read the caption. Your dear face hasn't changed. Everything changed when you were 13? Did you ever write about it here?
ReplyDeleteI might have. I don't remember. I know I've referenced it a few times. I'll have to search the blog. but I gave a very brief nuts and bolts in reply to Linda Sue above.
DeleteI love that photo of you when you were young. It really captures the moment so well.
ReplyDeleteI never celebrated Easter, so this holiday just passed right by without notice my whole life. I do love the colorful eggs and all the chocolate associated with it!
So fun to see your face in a photo of such a small child! Thanks for that. It is reassuring to me to know that I am not alone in my thinking re religion. When I see photos of huge crowds of people at religious events----be it in Rome, or in Saudi Arabia, I always wonder how it is that all those people believe something I just don't buy.
ReplyDelete