The Long Halloween Vol. II: Easter

O the bright sunny glowing spring morning when you wake up to find this basket filled with eggs and candy which somehow symbolises the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ - this is Easter Morning. Commercialised Easter is one of the more bizarre of the Commercialised Holidays. I get Halloween - that's all pagan. Christmas in addition to being a major Christian Holiday has enough general goodwill and spirited bullshit to pass off a nice sense of giving and cheer. What is Easter, though? It's generally should be one of our Darker Holidays - we're celebrating the great sacrifice and martyrdom of our main dude JC and his subsequent resurrection, which is a good thing. It's a more complex emotion and driving theme than dressing up and getting drunk or even just giving and joy. You'd think we'd have run out of Pagan Festivities by now.

Fuck that, just paste a bunny on the thing, call it a Spring Rejuvenation and call it a day. Jelly Beans for all! I cited it last year, but South Park's "Fantastic Easter Special" (S11;E5) is still required viewing for doing the best job connecting all the Easter Paradoxes better than I ever could. There aren't a whole lot of Easter-specific Films or Television Specials, especially compared to Halloween or Christmas. Easter may actually have retained too much of its religiosity - Easter Season isn't spent shopping for costumes or buying trees or other secular pursuits. The Easter build-up is pretty much Lent, Palm Sunday and Good Friday, and if you're a Participating Christian there is this edge of seriousness rather than the lightness of other Holidays. Sitting in church also makes for difficult films. Still, the large Secular portions of Eastern haven't really been mined...until now!

A Google Image Search for "Hop" yields so many shots of fields harvested for beer

Hopping Movies:

If you're looking for a good Easter Flick this day I'd say you've got the choice between The Passion of the Christ (2004) or...Hop (2011). Both should get you into the Spirit pretty equally. Also if you're a Jew you may check out The Ten Commandments (1956) in honour of Passover, which ends tomorrow. I believe they used to show that movie on TV on one of these nights, actually.

Anyway, until this year we really didn't have an Easter Movie the same way we had Christmas Movies. Hop has changed all that, and it actually may quickly become one of the highest-grossing 2011 films so far (any one else notice how pathetic this year is? This should unfortunately drive more 3-D releases actually). While it may not really be a particularly great film, it offers that Secular Popular Holiday Debunking that Easter was just craving (c'mon - you really want to watch a dude get his ass kicked for two hours tonight or that cuuute widdle bunny wabbt?!). Actually, I'm enjoying this interpretation the best.

Gooey Mooey Foodies:

Un-Fucking-Holy

Somehow because of the Rabbits involved we decorate Eggs. Great. Anyway, don't eat those eggs, but instead munch on chocolate (including the lagomorph variety), jelly beans and of course, Peeps. Peeps are Easter. I despise Peeps. They're disgusting. They come in two flavours as is my understanding, yellow or pink (I think there's also blue. Who orders Peeps online? That is what I would like least in the world to receive by mail). So you can get either nauseating neon coloured Bunnies or nauseating neon coloured chicks. Wonderful. Wonderful times.

So beyond the candy-filled morning (celebrate the Resurrection of Our Lord by seeing how many Sugar Marshmallows you can fit inside your mouth before 9 AM!) and the possible toy (My parents starting doing this - I'd find a Beast Wars or Street Sharks figure in my basket...they actually did get me Waspinator for Easter too, what the fuck guys, no Dinobot? Did Dinobot outsell for Easter? Holy shit.), typically there are some better things to eat and do once the day gets going. Lamb comes to mind. Other than that, just be generally penitent and your Easter will be as spectacular as mine used to be.

Fuck Waspinator. Even in the show they agreed that a giant bee should be retarded. You know he had two heads, right? A cool normal head and then the retarded head. No one ever used the cool head.