Easter is Almost Here!

It’s Good Friday today, and than means Easter is this Sunday. We are not sure how it being Good Friday entitles our neighborhood trash collectors to a day off, as they are never good, even earning the moniker, “Garbarians,” but it still signifies Easter is only two days away.  Easter is a holiday we celebrate in springtime, which typically comes right after March has gone out like a lamb, but occasionally, while March is still behaving like a lion, and clawing the crap out of our hopes for warmer weather. This year, Easter falls on Sunday, April 4, 2010.  Scholars say the word Easter is thought to come from the Scandinavian “Eastre,” translation, “Eat the rest of the eggs before they spoil rotten you ungrateful little heathens, or you’ll be left with nothing but herring.”  Some say it also has something to do with fertility, hence, the whole bunny thing.  The Christian celebration of Easter embodies a number of confusing traditions even if you’ve seen the films, but has some relation to the Jewish festival of Passover, in which the Jews were passed over yet again when it came time for Jehovah to hand out the prime real estate. That is, until they found the promised land of Los Angeles. Easter falls at the end of the Lenten season, which covers a forty-six day period of pretty much enjoying nothing - period.  Holy week is the last week of Lent, beginning with the observance of Palm Sunday, and providing the comforting notion that it’s only seven more days until the Messiah finally breaks out the marshmallow Peeps.