What even is the deal with Easter?
I asked the question sometime between buying hot cross buns that were so expensive we nearly had to remortgage the house (damn you delicious gentrifier bougie bakery next door) and the unhappy moment when I realized I forgot to turn off my alarm on Good Friday (sincere apologies to my partner).
I’ve always loved Easter in the way I love Victoria Day or BC Day—it is a stat holiday. Any day I don’t have to work is a day I love. I remember there being the occasional Easter egg hunt growing up, both in our living room at home and at the Teddy Bear Picnic at the baseball diamond. I remember my mother once sending me to a bible camp as a cheap form of summer-time daycare that leaned heavily on the whole Easter thing. However, despite coming from a long line of missionaries and another line of fire-and-brimstone Lutherans, my family is exceedingly atheist.
We just don’t do it. And like most young children, I thought my family was very typical. Until, that is, during social studies in middle school when our famously surly Acadian teacher was explaining the big three (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) and for extra context, explained that all of us in the class were Christians. Big ups to one classmate for raising her hand to out me as an atheist. I remember the teacher not quite knowing how to handle that information, and me being similarly shocked that many of my classmates seemed to be into this whole Jesus thing.
These days, Easter for me means zoom calls with my partner’s family back in Australia, where we all smash chocolate easter eggs between hot cross buns (perhaps another Catholic thing I didn’t learn from the 1999 classic, Boondock Saints?). For the first year ever, we were ready and had all of our supplies in advance. However, it quickly became apparent that everyone else had done it together on a different day, which I think now gives us license to never have to do it again. Which is fine because frankly I can’t afford hot cross buns in this economic climate.
But back to the question at hand: What is the deal with Easter? (To be read in a Seinfeld voice.)
Thankfully, my partner is a reformed altar boy and I have access to Wikipedia, so it wasn’t a mystery for long. And while a lot of it, quite frankly, doesn’t make sense to me (like, after he was resurrected he just sort of chilled for forty days before making like Norman Greenbaum and going up to the spirit in the sky??) I can always appreciate a good spring rebirth vibe (obviously this doesn’t apply in quite the same way in the southern hemisphere, but my tulips are thriving so deal with it).
So, this spring, I’ve enrolled in another short fiction class with the fabulous Michel Basilières, and I’ve booked a manuscript consult with Giller Prize finalist and Canada reads long-listed author Thea Lim to really double down on the writing hustle. If you need me, I’ll be typing. Or fighting the squirrels attacking my garden. Either way, I’ll be a bit preoccupied.
It is my most sincere hope that the next time you get an email from me, I’ve been published for more than guides on estate planning and the logistics of inheritance and executorship. (Shout out to the end-of-life planning blogging that is helping pay for the fun stuff!)
The best thing I’ve heard lately
“This guy’s tongue is out here tryna greet the food.”
I think this gives enough of a visual that you don’t need (or want) a gif here for context. But know this—they exist.
The Good CANCON
There is nothing I love more than stories that mine the ridiculousness of families and the awkwardness of adolescence and I have found a kindred spirit in my new running partner, Leah Cameron and her CBC Gem show, The Communist’s Daughter.
In the thick of the ‘80s, the daughter of two happily married Communists struggles between fitting in at high school and maintaining her family’s proletariat-loving TV-hating values.
It’s a quick comfort watch that will make you laugh till you snort, empathize with the Soviet-wannabe Scottish girl being crushed by the actual Soviet new girl, and wish you had your very own sketchy uncle Oleg. Come for the awkward high school laughs, stay for George Stroumboulopoulos’ award-winning performance as a local media personality.
The show also features a Lada, which was my grade twelve English teacher’s first car. He described it to me once as ‘the epitome of the failure of the Soviet Union.’ So, I mean, it’s a star.
As for the subject line, you may be wondering what is the string that connects the dots between Easter and Communism? Why did I hype the Communist’s Daughter in an Easter email? Well, it’s a tenuous link, but on the family Easter zoom last night where we did not do the communal Easter Egg Smash, my partner’s teenage nephew announced his decision to get a hair cut and we all bid adieu to his signature lob.
The inspiration for the haircut? Hot young Stalin, of course.
His words: Have you guys even seen a picture of young Joseph Stalin?!
I have, my friend. And I get it.
Happy Easter long weekend, comrades!