Thursday, March 28, 2013

Holes In The Holy

It's about this time every year that my wife and I begin our theological discussions about the very neat way that the powers that be (Romans) massaged the old lunar calendar into their new one, finding ways to paste over some of their less-than-holy days with bits and pieces of the sacred moments from a time before theirs. Twelve months, and almost every one of them ended with some sort of saint or holiness wedged in here or there, but Springtime is especially holidasical.
Good Friday. Passover. Palm Sunday. Easter. We are currently knee-deep in the hoopla. What we find confounding, however, is the certainty with which the makers of this calendar have attached an exact date for Jesus' birth, just after the winter solstice, but they couldn't be bothered to be as specific with the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord and Savior. It tends to slosh around late March and early April, much in the same way that the celebration of Moses and his followers being freed from their bondage by the Egyptians. It was my wife that first clued me into the idea that Jesus and his disciples were probably having a Seder just before the Romans came and picked him up for vagrancy and being the Son of God.
Conspiracy? We've come to expect that kind of those nutty Romans. If it all starts to seem a little like a Monty Python skit, you're not alone. Add to all this coincidence the way the calendar conveniently places that rebirth thing right on top of all the pagan rites of Spring, and you've got a great big Easter Basket full of confusion. Sometimes it's hard not to think of Jesus and Moses as contemporaries, like Superman and Batman starring in their own comic book worlds, but with the occasional crossover tie-in issues. They would definitely be in the DC universe. That might explain the whole Amazonian thing with Wonder Woman, but that would bring the Greeks into it. The Greeks do have one heck of an Easter celebration themselves, even if theirs is harder to find than the Romans. I guess we blame Jimmy Stewart for the six-foot tall bunny. He was Scotch-Irish.
Confused yet? We are.

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