Peeping Tom’s and Easter Sunday

I know strange title, but today is Good Friday. The video has nothing to do with Easter, yet to post on Good Friday without even acknowledging my Christian roots and the traditional Passover, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Jesus would be awful.

To be honest, I don’t post much about my faith on this website, but it seems that the amount of misinformation about Christianity seems to be abounding these days. (Don’t worry, I won’t turn this into a religious rant or post.) This is a reflection on my childhood memories and Easter traditions. Many middle aged people who do not attend church these days remember the time in which as kids they participated in Vacation Bible School for a week during the summer, or their parents dressed them up to attend church once or twice a year, once on Easter Sunday, the other the candle light service on Christmas Eve. As a child, I have good memories as my family and I took part in these celebrations. Today, many people argue about the paganism that has co-opted these two important Christian Holidays while others speak of how the Church co-opted pagan traditions such as the Easter bunny, the Christmas tree, and traditions surrounding Saturnalia.

As our society moves further away from the past, so our traditions begin to fade. It could be quite possibly the over commercialization of merchandise and making money off these holidays that began to putrefy the beauty of them for most. Then again it could be that we as a nation have lost our connection to our Christian roots. Either way, it is still part of our “collective unconscious” as Carl Jung would claim. It is part of our heritage. It is still there for most of our parents, grandparents, or great grandparents. It seems like ages ago that mothers and daughters would shop for the perfect Easter dress, and the fathers and sons would don a tie with their button down shirt, slacks, and dress shoes. Easter baskets would be gathered in the morning after a quick Easter egg hunt, and then off to church to squeeze into packed pews. After the service was over, people would pour out of the church to find the perfect buffet to enjoy just to give the matriarch of the family a day off from cooking, or quite possibly the matriarch would nix the idea and have a roast cooking in the oven for the family to return to once church was over.

Now, I don’t recognize my old traditions. Few dress up for Easter service any more. Choirs are replaced with worship teams. Pews have been traded in for easily stack-able chairs as sanctuaries have become large multi-purpose rooms. While Easter family dinner may be a quick bite at a fast food restaurant.

Perhaps, it’s time to start new traditions, enjoying and sharing memories of the past, but creating new memories for our posterity to enjoy, so when they are older, they will remember their traditions too.

Traditions can be a beautiful thing. Enjoy the Easter Season. He is risen. He is risen indeed.