I used my Easter quiche-making adventure as a reason to buy whole unpasteurized milk at the farmers market on Sunday - it felt decadent in a vaguely French way - though I suspect that many French people go to church on Easter, so perhaps that feeling only went as far as my cuisine. Anyway - of all holidays, Easter really highlights the limits of my cultural Christianity. I like the bunnies and egg dishes, and chocolate (though I admit - I still feel kind of guilty eating chocolate in animal form), but I don't think I've really dressed up for the holiday since my grandparents were alive - and even then I don't think we went to Mass (though I could be wrong about that). A couple of years ago, my mom sent me an email on Easter saying that it was really the most important Christian holiday, but she and my dad had failed to give us any experience of that, so instead of going to church, I should just go outside. This year, when I told my dad about my six hour brunch, which I stuck with despite looming deadlines and an ongoing waywardness of the soul, he said that that was exactly what the holiday was for, and informed me that he had been "watching the grass grow" and switching between golf and baseball on TV. Which leads me back to the solid ground of not just my cultural Christianity but my specifically not quite Catholic background: guilt abounds and absolution is pretty nice.
Then yesterday I went downtown during the egg roll festivities and, between seeing the Presidential motorcade in person for the first time in this presidency and all of the dressed up children (there was a girl in a purple tutu who reminded me very much of my younger self - stubborn and with an unconventional fashion sense and prone to sidewalk gymnastics), and happy looking parents (I heard more than one parent on the phone with someone somewhere else saying that they had a lot to say about the day and it was just a great time, and so on), that I was almost giddy - a difficult feat for a Monday morning. And also mystified -between the cherry and other blossoms and the festivities and Tweaks' sod centerpieces, DC seems to be uniquely and suprisingly well-suited to the churchiest of holidays.
2 comments:
Was it whole/unpasteurized milk in the quiche? Whatever it was - effing delicious.
Also, if that is the true meaning of Easter, my family brought me up wrong. I always had to go to church and then to the country club and there were these egg hunts and all this stuff. Luckily when I finally got home I could make myself sick on candy. Second only to Halloween in terms of candy consumption. Just ahead of Valentine's day. I'm pretty sure all holidays, though, should be about laying around with your friends drinking and enjoying yourselves. Except for maybe MLK day? Any other exceptions?
I was going to say Yom Kippur (which I had off from school growing up), but then I remembered that it involves fasting and, inevitably, breaking the fast (and participating in fast-breaking even if you aren't Jewish), so never mind...
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