Easter 2016: Joy, Laughter, Life!

Easter makes me itch, always has. When I was little, it was the damned dress, all lace and unforgiving elastic around my chubby middle. Hair ribbons! Pulling the skin taut across the skull, hiking the eyebrows. Perfect little Mary Janes and tight-tight tights. An endless church session – drone drone drone – incense tickling the nose and sweat crawling the ribs.  It was monstrous, I’m telling you.

In adulthood, the itch has become more a thing of the mind.

Well, here it is . . . why so quiet? Really, why is nobody shouting about this back-from-the-dead thing? Shouldn’t we be?

I think we should build a huge bonfire on Holy Saturday night and just push the darkness all the way back to the horizon. We should have all our friends over and sit talking beneath the moon with a wine glass in our hands until dawn cracks the sky open.

And then . . .  bells should be ringing everywhere, joy on the very air we’re breathing; we should be delirious with it. Because – in case anybody missed the big memo – we are God’s children and, ipso facto, we are happy. Poof! There is no anger, there is no hate, and here is the big one . . . there is no fear.  Because Jesus took that package for us. He wrapped it up in blood and tears and humanity and he tossed it in our laps and said, “open it.”  Inside?

Life. There is life

.

We’re meant to be joyful.

So throw away the pastels. Color the day in vivid emerald and sapphire and fill it with laughter. Toss every little transitory death that has victimized you into the clean blue fire and call it good. They were never yours anyway. Don’t ask yourself what you believe, or why or how. Just believe. Wrap your mind around the incomprehensibility of Eternal Life, and let yourself be awed. Not only are you good enough - you are, by your birthright, incredible. You just have to own it.

 

In a nutshell: Easter is probably the biggest thing that can happen to us here on Earth. I think we should all stop yawning and take notice.

Roll the stone away, people. Celebrate!

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I'm Dreaming of a ....Multicolored Christmas?

I’ve been allergic to white Christmas trees for years. They make me itchy, make my nose sting and my eyes tear up.
Maybe it’s the lack of smell. Or the sparkly paint on the stiff dead branches, more glare than glisten.

My fourth grade teacher had a miniature in a pot on her desk, all trimmed out in tinsel and red glass ornaments. I elbowed it to the floor on my way to the pencil sharpener and sometimes, forty years later, I still wake up in a cold sweat, having dreamed of her face in that critical moment.
Fourth grade was brutal.

In 1986 I worked fourteen hour days as slave labor in a greenhouse that specialized in Christmas décor. We sprayed white snow and shiny lacquer on pine branches until we were dizzy with the fumes. I had hives all over my body and fluid in my lungs, and I swore I would never, ever go white at Christmas.

A dear friend had a “life” sized white Christmas tree. Her fiancé had purchased it for her on a post- holiday sale, and he died, very suddenly of a heart attack, before Christmas came around again. I helped her decorate the wretched thing the following December, and amid tears and scattered branches and way too much rum, we finally reached an accord of sorts with the white tree.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said. “It won’t bring him back.”
“He would’ve wanted it,” she sobbed. “He loved white at Christmas.”
“One of these days.” – fanning a branch and sighing - “This sort of thing is going to get easier. For now, we'll just decorate the side facing the living room”

White lights, white pines, white snow, bleh. What about a real tree - big gaudy retro lights, red and green and blue? Candy cane stripes and glitter, homemade ornaments? Or . . .

Ah hell, it’s not about color, is it? It’s not about trees, or cookies or candy canes, and we know this because Linus tells us every year.  “ . . . the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, 'Fear not! For, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you: Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger . . .' "

Probably the baby wasn’t dressed all in white. The swaddling clothes would have been whatever blankets his mother had managed to tuck away for the journey. Maybe the baby himself wasn’t even white.  But we know, don’t we, that He shone with a brilliance, a beauty, a love that He would carry with him throughout his entire life and even after.

There it is. He is our “white” Christmas, people –  brighter than the Macy’s Christmas tree, shinier than the Chicago Bean. Gorgeous and perfect and wrapped all in love.

And love, after all, is a multi-colored beast, no?

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