Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Easter time

Mistletoe and wine. As Cliff Richard might have said, if he was... well.. wrong. People are quick to point out that the origins of Easter have more to do with pagan festivals than the christian ones, but to be honest christmas doesn't fair that well either. OK, yes, having Easter occur at a different time each year is pretty insane (because Jesus died on the cross on a different day depending which year it is?), and the whole easter egg thing is just fertility rites after all. But look at christmas. The tree? Mistletoe? Father Christmas? Rudolph the freaking red nosed reindeer? Actually any popular holiday is bound to not be very religious, because proper religious holidays aren't much fun- or at least I imagine they would not be.

The popular holidays are always ones that have little do with what they are celebrating- St Patricks day has now become a GIGANTIC advert for guiness. [It occurs to me that buying shares in Guiness (or whatever company owns them), a few months before st patricks day is bound to show dividends... ] Valentines Day... well that never really was a very serious day. November 5th.. well November the 5th is a pretty random day to celebrate. It's hardly like there haven't been plots to destroy the centre of government before or after it, yet Guy Fawkes gets all the credit, despite some theories suggesting that it was a set up.

On an inquisitive note, I am aware that should one be of a differing religon, one can get time off work to celebrate this. But in this case.. do you get Easter and Christmas off too? 'Cause that seems like cheating to me....

3 Comments:

At 1:37 am, Blogger cait said...

Real religious holidays are actually very fun, unless you're a methodist. But then, it seems like methodists don't have fun in general.

 
At 3:31 am, Blogger Ben said...

I always remember sticking things into an orange at xmas, i think that was religious (something to do with the Church of England I assume). It was a rather fun activity though.

 
At 3:27 pm, Blogger The Venomous Bee said...

If you go to a Benedictine college St. Benedict's day is huge ... the monks give you wine and mead.

 

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