Easter

“On egg patrol”


There is a lot of controversy among fellow Christians about Easter as a holiday. I really don’t care to get into that, ‘cause it’s near impossible to pacify Christians when we’re in the state of controversy. 

Being a Christian myself, I’ve gotta tell you, it doesn’t take a whole lot to get us upset. Scripture warns us against that very thing, but we do it anyway. I think it’s ‘cause we’re all human. That’s what I’m thinking.

Regardless whether you consider Easter as a date with any religious significance or not, I gotta tell you that a lot of believers have been trying to nail down the exact date that Jesus died. One outfit has placed the date at Apr 3, 33. 

One big problem with that is the fact that some believe the first B.C./A.D. calendar to be in error, and that Christ was actually born somewhere between 7 to 4 B.C. and died somewhere between 26 and 29 A.D. (It has to do with Herod the Great dying in 4 B.C. Just go with it.)

In researching this stuff I got lost. The one thing I can tell you with reasonable confidence is that Easter falls on the First Sunday after the first full moon following the first day of Spring. It has to do with the Biblical tie between the Jewish Passover and the death of Christ. I’d tell you more, but I know just enough to confuse the daylights outta me.

Since the days of my youth, our family celebrated Easter without applying any spiritual significance to the day. Our church considered Easter something pagans came up with. I had no idea what that meant, but I wasn’t paid to think.

Mom let us have boiled eggs, an Easter basket and stuff like that, but we couldn’t tie ‘em to Jesus… which wasn’t a big problem for me, ‘cause it made no sense. Adults could explain away the physical aspect of anything as ridiculous as a large bunny rabbit hiding eggs, but explanation of “The Spiritual” just got people upset.

Obviously, many people say there was no Son of God that ever visited the earth, so the date means nothing to them one way or the other. A lot of people fought and died for all of us to believe whichever way we wish. My faith tells me that God could make us do anything He wanted, but allowed us to have freedom of choice. Our Constitution is based on such a belief, and that’s nothing short of grand.

That being said, one thing Kay and I are going to be doing on the Saturday before Easter is helping out with Eggapalooza. It’s something our church (Grace Crossing Church of Christ) started doing on the Saturday afternoon before Easter from 2:30 to 4:30. I’m telling you about it in case you wish to bring your kids to the festivities. (By the way, there are similar gatherings all around the county. Kids are so much more fortunate than in my youth.)

Eggapalooza happens over at the park at Harper’s Landing, located on the east side of I-45, and north of highway 242. Enter the Harper’s Landing entrance, and you should find it. There will be bounce houses, cotton candy, snowcones, face painting, egg hunting and other stuff. It’s free, too. I can hardly believe it myself.

Last year Kay and I were part of the Eggapalooza cleanup crew. It wasn’t all that much fun. It needed doing, but it wasn’t a blast. I didn’t even get to go down the big inflatable slide or go inside the bounce house. I love bounce houses.

This year, I’m involved in hiding the eggs and being on egg patrol. Hiding the eggs is easy as pie. Easier than pie, even. We don’t hide anything. We rope off a soccer field and scatter out a bunch of plastic eggs filled with candy. I think it’s an insult to the children. They don’t have to do anything but walk and bend over. Even if we blindfolded them, they’d still end up with a basketful of stuff.

The hard part of my job is the part where I have to nonchalantly check baskets for overage. We don’t know how many kids to expect, so there’s a chance we could run out of eggs. We’ve got tons of ‘em, but maybe the baskets will be bigger this year. Who can tell?

Anyway, I’m supposed to make sure no one carries out more than 20 eggs. Can you believe that? – “Mommy, that mean man over there, stole this many of my eggs!” -- She’s holding up five fingers. -- “I hate the mean man!” 

I can’t see me doing that. I might have Kay distract a kid for a minute and then steal some eggs outta his or her basket. While I doubt Jesus would condone the practices of the egg patrol, somebody’s got to do it so that others may have eggs.

And that may well open up a proverbial can of worms among some of us believers. It doesn’t take much. 

End