Another Easter has gone by, and I’m a revolting blob again. Whatever one’s religion, Easter is a sacred time of worship. Some bow down to the sanctified Christ on a wooden cross, dying for the sins of mankind. Others fall to crackling knees and throw their straw hats to the azure heavens to celebrate the Northern Hemisphere pagan harvest festival and the healthy yield for the summer ahead. In saying this, I doubt that much of the university population reading this are that swept up and joyous in the northern hemisphere’s blooming crops, but I guess there are weirdos in every group. All of us, however, whatever our denomination or lack thereof, shake our arms gospel-style and sing our glory-amens in abject reverence to the foil-covered earthy-brown orb.
“Giver of life, taker of slim figure. O, how thine hath loved me, Holiest Easter confectionery.”*
Easter, in what it has become in this age of rampant commercialism (one can only wonder how long it will be before scruple-less marketers bring out the combined Easter-Anzac Day slouch hat made of chocolate), strikes me as a particularly silly celebration. Now, before the members of Student Life and other Christians on campus strike me down with chant of ‘BLASPHEMER!’ let me elaborate: yes, to all scholarly knowledge, around two thousand years ago a holy man was crucified. I’m just a little hazy on where chocolate rabbits came to be involved in this death – perhaps Roman guards who savagely whipped the back of the cursed Son of God were chocolate rabbits taking out their frustration at melting in the hot Middle Eastern sun on an innocent victim.
Personally, I’d like to see a return to a less corrupted form of holiday: one where the celebration is something pure for those it means so much to, and for others is a time of goodwill and not crass commercialism. A simultaneously religious and secular time, where the lessons are love, tolerance and respect; not just how to sell your surplus chocolate stocks (see also: Valentine’s Day). Failing this, I’d just like to see the whole season renamed ‘Beaster’, a special time that sees a long weekend full of high-impact monster truck racing and spectacular crashes. Continuing on this tack, I’d also like to see Christmas officially recognised as ‘Xmas’ – featuring Xtreme sports and spectacular crashes – and the renaming of ‘Bank Holiday’ to ‘Tank Holiday’ (that one special day a year where fully-equipped military tanks are deployed onto the streets, providing a chilling reminder of military might… and spectacular crashes.) All ‘events’, of course, would be highly profitable and have nothing to do with the intent of the celebration.
As it is, Easter comes to us in the guise of a religious festival and with all the subtly of the aforementioned monster truck. Easter wouldn’t be Easter without chocolate, and so the consumer is urged by the genial shopkeeper to make their friends and family as fat as possible in a single long weekend period. It wouldn’t surprise if the whole thing was some sort of collusion with weight-loss clinics (“We’ll pork ‘em up nice ‘n’ good, then you get them ready for next year”). Each year it all seems to arrive a little earlier, and I believe the ‘Easter 2003’ hoardings are already up in your local supermarket or gift store – in the aisle next to the ‘Christmas 2016’ display. You can call retailers a lot of things, but ‘eager’ is sure to be near the top of the list.
Anyway, regardless of our respective faith, and irrespective of our hatred for the corporate manipulation of special days**, we all love to devour a good old Easter egg or eighteen. I hear atheists are particularly fond of the big hollow eggs, while agnostics like eggs with the little bite-sized candy treats inside (it symbolises their quest for spiritual growth or something). We all like chocolate (unless you’re lactose intolerant or allergic to cocoa, in which case, I’m sorry to have made you read so far) and we all feel by the time Easter Monday rolls on that we should forgo that delicious looking Hot Cross Bun and repent, before our vexed stomach sells itself to Beelzebub. Upon Wednesday’s arrival, we’ve all panicked and called the local church and asked for an old, experienced priest and a younger minister new to the parish to perform an exorcism and raise the hell-demons of Dis, Hades, Cadbury and Darrell Lea and cast them back to the fiery pits from whence they came. We vow that our faith will be stronger now, and that come next Autumn (or spring if you’re here on exchange and get kicked out and sent home any time soon) we will be resilient to the vice and temptation of luscious milk chocolate flowing with gooey caramel. We will be wary of the large, red-horned bunny wearing a fetching vest and no pants who bears gifts.
“Oh Yes…As [insert deity of choice here] is my witness, the Cocoa demon will be quashed! BACK, I SAY!”
As for me, I look at myself as a sacrifice... a martyr for all of mankind’s gluttonous, slothful chocolate sins and secrets. My metabolism has dimmed a little since the heady days of childhood Easter egg hunts (the eggs usually laid in a careful trail toward the portal of a Hell mouth), but I can still put away a carton of eggs an not see the results on my frame (I’ve been told that I have childbearing hips). All of you readers should be deeply thankful for this gift of Me; an omniscient orb-eating man sent of the ether to take all of your spare Easter eggs and sickening multitudes of chocolate and, well, eat them.
“It’s a tough job but, as I say, I am a martyr so that all of thee may live slightly slimmer – on this world as it is in the next, forever and ever, amen.”***
* - Book of Nick, Verse III Line II
** - Yes, I realise that by partaking in the Easter-Chocolate ‘Axis of Evil’ I’m only aiding the corruption of Easter and other days with some kind of significance. I reconcile this with the fact that I am weak-willed and lonely, so chocolate is my only friend anyway.
*** - From Nick Marland: Latter-day Saint, p. 57