The Year When Easter Falls on a Sunday

This year is one of those extraordinary years when Easter falls on a Sunday. For that reason, I thought I would-

Wait.

Stop.

What am I thinking? Easter always falls on a Sunday.

Well. There goes this week’s blog post…

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I’m kidding of course. Just pulling your leg gently this Easter morn. Except in a tiny way, I’m not. In thinking about what I might write for this week’s post, it momentarily occurred to me how Easter would be on a Sunday this year and that I should somehow reflect that. It was the splitest of split seconds but it’s still indictive of something, I reckon.

It kind of confirms that Easter has largely been lost to me, as a certain type of thing.

I’ve written about it before in these pages. How Easter was a big deal when I was small. And I don’t just mean chocolate eggs and treats, although that was definitely a thing. I mean the religious stuff, last supper, scourging, denial, crucifixion, large stones, resurrection, all that gear. As an altar boy and as a child in a good Christian family, all the rites were observed and attended. The weekend played out almost as if the iconic events of the season were playing out in real time. They occurred in a “It’s nearly midnight, Jesus will be waking up soon,” kind of a way.

These days, because I’m not into that anymore, and also, I guess because the kids are grown up and gone, Easter is a sort of a ‘Spring Long Weekend’ of forest walks and clocks-going-forward and mint sauce. But something lingers from the early years. Some feeling for the places of the world out there, where all the rites are still being enacted just as they always were.

Here in my home, I tend towards the more solemn music on the radio. I veer onto the old biblical epics on afternoon telly, where the Roman soldiers all had American accents and where John the Baptist was clearly Robert Ryan in a stick-on beard.

It’s not a wish to go back to the old ways. It’s not a probing of the space where the children used to reside. At least I don’t think it is. It’s just that we can’t really unlearn what we previously learned. We can grow to see what we believe is the truth and the fiction of it all, but the muscle-memory continues to tug at whatever passes for our souls these days.

Easter falls on a Sunday this year. Go figure. Let’s mark it as best we can. A walk by the lake, a hint of lamb from the grill, a small dark chocolate M&S egg.

We haven’t lost anything.

It just feels that way sometimes.

Happy Easter!