Me and the Bunny: Confessions of a Hare-a-tic

I am programmed to go to church, but can't bring myself to do it. Raised Catholic, I can't see going anywhere else, and home no longer feels right, either. Story of my life, really.

I can’t see myself at one of the mega-churches that have sprouted up around here. If it works for you, fine.

It just doesn’t seem like church to me to go to a sports stadium on Easter Sunday with 11,500 other people, or to go to the place with the HD TVs throughout, skits and lite rock music, like some sort of religious Celine Dionne concert.

As for my old home, a Pope who wears red Prada shoes really shouldn’t be railing out about gay people. Benedict dislikes pop music, too, not because it sucks, but because he sees it as the tool of the devil. Now, I am no Simon Cowell fan, either, but he was talking about Bob Dylan. What year is this, anyway?

And don’t even get me going about the role of women and other issues of human sexuality.

I do miss the sense of camaraderie from going to mass, the sense of belonging, even some of the pageantry.

But it would feel like a great big lie for me to go, not because I don’t believe in anything, but because I do believe, basically in the bit about live and let live, not judging, trying to be nice to each other, and, toughest of all to do, forgiveness of others’ transgressions and tougher still, learning how to deal with your own.

At the same time, unlike, say, Mel Gibson, I am a wimp of a believer. The blood and guts stuff scares me, and Easter should be rated R for its violent content. When at the age of 7 you are told you are eating the body and blood of Christ, it tends to stick with you like a nightmare.

In fact, I vomited once at the altar, just before communion. I think this was at Christmas though, and may have been a stomach virus, not fear.

Come to think of it, I was sick with some sort of flu one little boy Easter. A Catholic school kid, we had been assigned to decorate color paper cutout eggs with our Venus Paradise pencils for a class contest.

The first one I entered was all fluffy bunny stuff and fared poorly. Home sick, with nothing better to do (this was before Nintendo, boys and girls) I designed another, a gory folk art masterpiece with Jesus hanging on the cross, dead there for our sins, and his Mom and Mary Magdalene weeping, and red and yellow checks in the bottom part of the egg to fill it out.

When I got back to class, then nun told me that would have been the winner, my first lesson in knowing your market, I guess, but a lesson I don’t apply as often as I should.

I did used to like Easter candy, too, the giant chocolate egg from Fannie Mae candy, the white chocolate bunnies, the foil wrapped chocolate eggs, even the basket. The dogs ate it all one year when we hid the treats for our younger brother.

We’d dye eggs, using the latest in egg-dying technology. I am old enough for that to mean: little wax pencils to write your name on the shell colored with the McCormick’s vegetable dye mixed with hot water and vinegar; swirling psychedelic dyes; fake tattoo-like appliqués; stickers; and the Décor-egger, in which you put the egg to art up with geometric designs made with little pens.

Most of the time the eggs went uneaten, kept around until they were about to rot. One year, in fact, apparently thinking they’d make good fertilizer I buried the eggs in the back yard.

And I miss the lamb cake, too. My grandmother had a mold and my Mom may have actually used it once or twice. Pound cake covered in coconut frosting. But we usually got one from a bakery or Jewel.

A buddy of mine made one this year, covering it with chocolate frosting instead, a black sheep for the table which may or may not be symbolic but probably more edible than the traditional style.

Of course, there is ham, which my cousin Dan, who is a doctor now, once said is the meat closest to human flesh. Or maybe that was a line from a movie.

That may be, but what kind of a guest would I be to turn down a ziplock baggie or two of leftovers?

See, I may not go to church, but I did go to three places for eats yesterday. You can’t get the past out of your system, so you might as well enjoy the meal.