Easter is one of those holidays, like Thanksgiving, that I typically don't get to spend with family. Consequently, I have enjoyed some incredibly random Easter celebrations.
In college, right before the Easter break, there was a party that was so epic that I doubt anyone who ever attended said party would ever be able to run for elected office because of incriminating photographic evidence. It was called the Saint to Sinner party. You came to the party dressed as your favorite saint and left as your favorite sinner. Without going into too much detail, I will say that there was a ritual chanting of the beginning of Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" and one year I woke up the next morning on an airplane to Minneapolis with no idea how I had gotten there.
Then, there was the year that I visited Boston from New York, staying with a friend of mine. On Easter morning, as I walked out of her guest bedroom to go brush my teeth, I noticed a trail of jelly beans leading to my very own Easter basket. In the middle of the night, her husband had made elaborate candy trails for she and I to find when we woke up.
In Boston one year, I had been out til all hours of the morning carrying on with a visiting friend from NYC and my roommate. My roommate and I got home as the sun was coming up on Easter morning and passed out. Nevertheless, every hour on the hour, my roommate dragged her hungover self out of bed to check on the pot roast she put in the oven as soon as we stumbled in to the apartment in our club clothes from the night before. That was either the year before or after the Easter when I saw "Rent" with an ex-Marine who wore American flag boxer shorts.
When I lived in New York, I made my home in Astoria, Queens, which is home to a very large Greek Orthodox population. One Good Friday, I had to have an emergency root canal and was lying on my couch, delirious with pain medication when a friend stopped by to drop off a package for me. He handed over the package and said "Um, you might want to come see this." and led me outside. The streets of my neighborhood were filled with people dressed in black, holding candles and silently walking. It was my first introduction to the pageantry of the Eastern Orthodox religion and was quickly followed by the second. At midnight that Saturday, the same people were out in the streets, shooting off illegal fireworks and dancing to a marching band proceeded by a flower-bedecked statue of Jesus. It was beautiful and strange and wonderful...especially when enhanced by Vicodin.
That same year, I tried to find a church nearby that was holding an Easter service at a reasonable hour. This was before we used the internet for EVERYTHING, guys, and I was pretty much just walking around, looking at the announcement boards outside of various churches for the better part of an hour, increasingly footsore and discouraged. Finally, I found a service that was about to start and I ran in, grabbing a program from an usher at the door. Turns out, the service was entirely in Korean. A very kind young woman pointed that fact out to me and I asked her if it was OK if I stayed. She seemed bewildered why I would want to, but she said I could. The highlight of the service was recognizing one of the hymns and singing along in English as the rest of the congregation sang in Korean.
You can keep your Easter parades and spiral sliced hams... I prefer my Easters random, weird and preceded by debauchery.
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