My Easter

   This past Sunday was Easter, and I spent it in a very leisurely way-- slept in, sat on my butt on the couch with the laptop, made a a quick trip out for propane and then had a nice steak dinner with my wife and her mother.

Not terribly fond of either one of them, actually...

   I did all this under the auspices of a holiday commemorating the resurrection of Jesus Christ-- an impossible event involving a possibly mythical man. I am game, though, for any celebration which provides me with an extra-long weekend. Yay!
   Back when I was a young lad, Easter invariably meant a  sunny day, lilies and a trip to church. Thankfully, it also meant candy and eggs. I remember it kind of annoyed me that Easter didn't generate the deluge of gifts that Christmas did and it befuddled me that people said it was a religiously more significant occurrence. I guess it was the fact that anybody can be born but only Jesus could actually die and then come back again which highlighted its significance. Oh well, as a kid, it just seemed like both a wasted opportunity for more gifts and having to get dressed up, all over again.
   I want to say that I am an atheist. It's a term which I think most people are familiar with. It's also a really nice, short little word and I appreciate short, little words. Most people understand an atheist to be someone who does not believe in God, or other deities.
   

Love it when the grandparents get all cute like that!

The problem though is that, by the truest definition of atheism, an atheist also does not believe in an afterlife. I believe in an afterlife. I just don't believe in God, or gods and I don't think someone is "in charge". Why and how I believe in a godless afterlife is probably a subject for a future blog post, however. In the meantime, I'm not sure what you should call me.
   Because of all this, religious holidays like Christmas and Easter can be a little problematic. There is some need to partake of holiday rituals because the majority of your friends and loved ones are. At the same time, though, there is also a need to protect your integrity as a non-believer.
   I wonder if Easter would be more fun if I believed in Jesus? There was a time when I at least believed in the existence of Jesus and I spent a lot of time pondering on what kind of man he might have been. I never believed he was the son of a god or anything but I did believe that he walked this earth and possibly had some charismatic pull over people.

Jeffrey Hunter in "King of Kings". Some actors get crucified
for their performances---Hunter didn't.

   Because I used to think he actually existed, it was always enjoyable for me to sit down and watch movies about his life, particularly at Easter. One of my all-time favourite movies is "King of Kings", with Jeffrey Hunter. For a brief period of time, on Easter day, I would take out my copy of this movie and watch it, generally by myself. It was kind of my own little Easter tradition. It's one of those powerfully epic Biblical movies and certain scenes never ceased to move me. I was also in love with the soundtrack.
   As my belief that there actually was a Jesus of Nazareth dwindled, my love for depictions of his life necessarily changed as well. Suddenly, it made almost as much sense to believe in a movie which had Santa Claus in it. So I now feel robbed of the one small connection I still had left with Easter---its movies.
   I am still quite happy to wish my friends and loved ones a Happy Easter, the same as I might wish them a Merry Christmas or a Happy Hanukkah (or St. Patrick's Day or Halloween, for that matter). I have no problem with acknowledging what might be important to other people, regardless of what my own belief system might be. I think we all grasp at what makes us happy and if the thought of sailing along on this rudder-less ship called Life, headed inexorably toward the edge of one of the greatest experiences a person can have makes me happy than so be it! Perhaps I should come up with my own little holiday, a day in which I celebrate a lack of gods in the world...hmmm...how about "Just Do Good Because It's Good Day"? Or maybe "Big Unknown Adventure Day"? Or, if all else fails, we could call it "Don't Put All Your Eggs In One Easter Basket Day"!