It’s actually kinda neat that 2 of America’s seasonal festivals (Thanksgiving/fall and Independence Day/summer) are coded nationalistically and the other 2 (Christmas/winter and Easter/spring) religious
You would be the first to admit that Big Capitalism is not America’s religion, but it is a dominant force in the country. And I think Christmas is more capitalist than it is religion. So 2/1/1
Yeah, the draining religious content is an interesting synecdoche for the national culture here (Pilgrims giving thanks used to bear religious overtones!)
Now Easter’s the tougher case, that’s still more religious-coded as religiosity declines, we worked up the bunny, eggs, and candy baskets to give it some secular content but that’s not really thick enough to bear weight on its own, in my childhood you might dress “up” for church and then go to a nice lunch with your extended family (in town, this wasn’t a holiday you traveled for – actually that itself is an interesting distinction, you’d travel for Thanksgiving and Christmas but not Easter or the 4th [though summer holiday road-tripping was a thing]), but that was kind of the small-town “Sunday best” model the previous generation had experienced every week
I take holidays very seriously. Culture and cultus and all. The thing that most bugged me about the reign of Bush the Younger was declaring September 11th as “Patriot Day”. HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO CELEBRATE PATRIOT DAY? Parades? Barbecues? Mattress sales?
(I threw a Jenga tournament.)
Anyway. Christmas made the transition to post-Christianity pretty well. It’s the feast of one half of the new Santa Claus/Batman dual god, one of the biggest holidays of the year, strong enough that people make up knockoffs.
(and don’t think you’re daring for pointing out that Kwanzaa is bullshit, actual black nationalists realized that by, like, Nia of 1966)
But Easter, man.
I think part of that is the secular aspects haven’t kept up with the times. Christmas gifting went from rare exotic fruits and nuts to rare consumer electronics, Easter from rare chocolate and candies to trivially ubiquitous chocolate and candies.
I mean that’s the only time you get bunny chocolate (pf, no one cares about the Easter bunny) and creme eggs (fair) but psh.
So, ideas:
• expand the egg hunt thing, make it a day for huge scavenger hunts, like the Herald Hunt. (Dave Barry is a national treasure.)
• deprecate it in favor of Good Friday. This sets up a 3-day weekend in its role as “spring festival” and reorients it around death. That’s weird for a spring festival, but it could work. In one direction, as a celebration of the time humanity managed to kill a god, in another set it up as the “Batman” feast, maybe by transposing the Crucifixion elements of Marian cultism.
I am wondering if the Dream Center, this local fortress of Christian mercy, shut down for Easter. Or alternately bussed a bunch of people in for a meal or something. Because in the course of walking like 12 blocks round trip today I ran into like 5 scruffy people having incoherent conversations (with themselves a/o me), and none of them regulars. One young dude standing in the bushes by Taco Bell/KFC asked me for a light and when I said sorry I didn’t have one he said that’s okay because of that sport where you have to make polynesian grass skirts.
