Glad Påsk!

So this is Easter weekend. I grew up Catholic but I have recovered from it. This week used to be one of non-stop church going for me. Led by my intrepid mother, she would parade all 6 of us dressed in our finest, complete with hats, to church for four nights running.

Holy Thursday, aka Maundy Thursday, was the kick off. I recall this one not being so bad as it was just the regular length of a normal Sunday mass except at some point a line of old parishioners would process to the front and get their feet washed by the Priest. I always wondered about those old women who got theirs washed right through their pantie hose.

Good Friday, also a short service, was a kind of strangely silent time. No singing of hymns...just silence and LOADS of kneeling and standing over and over again. Then we would all get a Communion wafer and go home quietly. If we dared to whisper to one another we would get a sharp thump on the back of our heads to shut us up and a VERY STERN talking to when we got home. To me, Good Friday services were just an inconvenient break in an otherwise perfect day off from school.

Holy Saturday - I'll refer to this as the marathon of all church services. It started out in the parking lot of the church, in the dark, in the cold, where we would huddle en masse around a Weber grill while the Priest said some incredibly long prayers and burned all the left over palm branches from Palm Sunday. He'd also do something with a giant Easter candle and then we'd all follow him in, still in the dark, and the BAM! lights on and the choir would kick into what was the first of about a zillion hallelujahs. Add enough incense and smoke to choke a horse, 7 Bible readings, more invocations, a Baptism or three and you pretty much get the idea. It was a challenge to stay awake, not pass out or throw up! The service lasted for three hours and it was almost midnight by the time we would all parade home again.

Easter Sunday was back to the regular Mass length and everyone dressed up like they were going to actually meet Jesus. Hence the hats. The hats were always strange, overly ornate works of art with feathers, veils, flowers or all three attached on them somewhere. We have one picture of all of us standing together in these very flat, very modern jobbies my mother picked out one year. We look like some children who wondered into Area 51 and the aliens had landed on our heads.

I tend not to believe in all this so much anymore and, frankly, I go to church maybe once a year just to appease my mother. She's convinced that I am destined to burn because of this. Still, I have to admit that there was some magic in those rituals. If not magic, at least it was good theatre. There's something to be said for the tradition of it all. But, deep down, I don't miss the torture of this week at all. Being dragged to church four nights in a row and threatened with punishment, abandonment or, heaven forbid, the absence of an Easter basket was no fun for a kid. And, honesty, I don't think it would be fun as an adult either.