The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
March 23, 2008
Vol. 11 no. 12

Everything But...
           We cannot do it much earlier than this. The first full moon after the spring equinox occurs this closely only every couple of centuries. In three years, 2011, Easter will wait until April 24th - about the latest it can possibly occur. Enjoy it while it lasts!
           As a consequence of the early date, it is darker this Easter, no matter whether it is standard or daylight savings time. It was even darker for Mary Magdalene that first day of the week in a society with no electrical lights. When you are going to mourn at the tomb of a convicted revolutionary, you prefer to be in the dark, even if that means stumbling a little bit along the way.
           We prefer spring at Easter, warm sunshine, green grass and bright flowers. Especially in climates like ours, we feel a little cheated that it isn’t quite Easter yet when the snow hasn’t melted and the temperatures hover still around 0, and the trees are bare and green appears only on St. Patrick’s Day. Yet when it’s dark and barren, we can see the light so much easier.
           No matter which date Easter falls upon, blame the moon, our biggest problem is that there is too much light. We already know what has happened or will happen and there is no surprise about the events of the third day; everything is too normal. It is the abnormality of Easter that is its proof. Way too many people attempt to make Christianity reasonable on this day, with natural and social explanations and systems of air-tight logic firmly in place. These reasonable explanations are boring, as well as missing the point of that dark morning. Easter only makes sense once you are dead, and now once again you are alive. It’s the best thing that you have been dead enough to know that today you are really alive again.