It's the Egg Holiday!

I wonder at what point in recent American history the Easter Bunny became a Santa Claus-like figure, where you sit on his lap at the mall and he hides things on your property in the middle of the night for you to find the next morning. In fact, when did it become THE Easter Bunny instead of AN Easter bunny? When did a rabbit come into play for the resurrection of Jesus?

I don't have to ask where the eggs came from, though. We have eggs at Passover. Jesus was probably eating them at the Last Supper, along with crackers and nasty low-proof wine that tastes like cough syrup.

Gross.

Whether it's Passover or Easter, though, I love the egg holiday. I love boiled eggs to either eat or decorate. I love that activity where you blow all the liquid out of the egg and decorate the hollow shell while you eat omelets. One year, I blew some eggs and used Elmers Glue to encrust them with glass beads and loose jewels. I hoped we stashed those in a safe place.

Of course I have loose jewels just lying around, I'm Catwoman.

Most of all, though, I love hiding the eggs and finding them again. It was always our tradition to hide and find at least two or three times on Easter Sunday because it's just so much fun! They're bright and cheerful, you get to put them in a pretty basket, and if you break one or lose one in the woods, it's no big deal--you'll just find it several months later and get the joy of squishing some gross rotting thing to see how gross and rotting it is. Few joys in a rural childhood can equal that.

Berry picking is fun, too.

 Even the Daifukuji Soto Mission hosts an annual egg hunt for the children. They usual schedule it for the same day they celebrate Buddha's birthday because everybody loves an egg hunt.

Even Buddhists.

Happy Passover!

Damn, missed another Sunday post. I'd say it was due to religious reasons, but the truth is, I was just hungover and didn't want to make the effort. On the other hand, I was hungover for religious reasons. So really, God wanted me to miss a post, and all the people who were waiting anxiously to experience my special brand of wit and poetic flavor need to take it up with the big sparkly one upstairs.

That's Mr. Sparkle to you!

Last week was Passover. The BF and I had two Seders to attend this year, which is great news for my social life and bad news for my liver, as four cups of wine must be consumed during the ceremony. I'm completely out of practice for a mandatory drinking event and probably should have had a training montage beforehand instead of just waltzing in and pounding manischewitz like it's a genetically engineered Russian.

Shalom!

The first Seder was at the BF's folks' apartment. I wore a modest navy blue frock and didn't swear in front of the children. The second Seder, the one that interrupted regular Sunday blogging, I wore polka-dots, threw water on God, called Pharaoh a bitch, and led my people across the Red Sea so that nothing bad would ever happen to the Jews ever again.

Between then and this, nothing but sunshine.

My friend R comes from a theater family, so her new tradition--

TRADITION!

Sorry, it's compulsory. R's new tradition is to do a Seder play, where instead of just reading about the liberation of the Jews from Egypt, her guests act it out. I got to be Moses this year, hence the throwing of the water on the guest who played Burning Bush God, which is a far more sensible reaction to finding God on fire than Moses taking off his shoes (which is what actually happens in the scripture during that sequence. I may not know Hebrew but I'm not a total goy). I think I made a pretty good Moses, even if my voice is high and squeaky and nothing like Charlton Heston's.

Next time, though, I think I'm going to be Pharaoh and let the BF be Moses. That way, when he's all, "Let my people go!", I'll be all, "Make me, you staff-wielding peasant." And he'll be like, "I'm going to beat you with my staff!" And I'll say, "Ooo, not the staff, my delicate royal skin bruises so easily!" And he'll say, "You've been naughty, Pharaoh, and you know what we do to naughty gods-in-mortal-form out in the desert." The safety word will be placemat, and--

Wait, what am I thinking? R would never allow ad-libbing at her table. Or on or under her table. We'll just have to stick to the script. I think there's some light bondage in Scene 2 I can work with.