Happy Easter Everyone... and I mean that in the secular, non-religious way.
You know, Easter Bunnies, Easter Eggs, Colourful Easter Baskets. The way Easter was meant to be.
Maybe you buy a new shirt.
A new pair of pants.
A chic little, black, cocktail dress and a huge hat festooned with ribbons and pearls which you proudly wear while strolling down the avenue arm-in-arm with Fred Astaire.
Peeping, yellow Chicks and chocolate and sunny, spring days and more chocolate.
Then, there's the other less popular Easter Story that scares small children and adults half to death for the rest of their lives- when they buy into it.
That other less happy-go-lucky yarn concerns a youngish Jewish man who lives with 12 other men and a Hag called Mary. They skip around the Judean countryside in little more than rough, cottony shift dresses- cinched at the waste with rope, all the while charming all the little old ladies and men by turning water into wine.
THE best party trick of all!
The story turns into a horror show however- like Carrie, with the young Jew nailed up to an tree of sorts by bad men who speak Latin but have indoor plumbing and slaves to cater to their every whim.
A gruesome death follows for the handsome- unmarried Jew. His parents- by the way, are sick about the fact their son is in his early thirties and not married. Even Aunt Sophie asks him every Christmas and Easter- "So, Jesus Christ do you have a girlfriend already?"
Back to the story...
A couple of days pass. The body rots and smells something terrific inside a tomb yet- miraculously, the stone covering the entrance rolls away and the young Jew rises up. He steps outside the tomb into the brilliant morning sunshine, sees his shadow and waits a few more weeks for Judean Spring to come.
Pass the chocolate Easter Eggs please.
