Easter

It’s just not that big of a deal to me.  I think it’s because Christmas is such an important holiday for me, and one that I invest so much time and effort into celebrating.  I feel like celebrating Christmas is such a statement – it’s very purposeful and discussed and debated and agonized over.  But Easter?  Eh.

It’s obviously a HUGE Christian holiday, and because I’m not Christian, it’s not my holiday.  (Whereas I get really personally offended when someone says that because I’m Jewish, Christmas isn’t my holiday).  Sure, it’s fun, everyone talks about the Easter Bunny, and my kids love decorating eggs, but the religious aspects of it, to me, are not applicable to me.   Christmas is different – that’s a holiday like Thanksgiving to me.  A uniquely American tradition that I have loved since I was a child, and I want desperately for my kids to have that experience.

Passover is a big holiday for me.   A much more significant one for me personally, it’s the first holiday that I met Marc’s parents, the first Jewish holiday I celebrated with him.  It’s also the holiday that I miscarried my twins on, and I think of them a lot at this time of year.

As the kids have gotten older, Passover has become ever more significant.  It’s an event, starting with Passover shopping, coming up with different meal options.  We have four major holiday parties for Passover, two regular Seders, one Seder that Marc runs for a local Presbyterian church, and then our own Passover Party this weekend.  We do Passover posters, the kids sing the four questions as they wander around the house, and we discuss the Exodus story over and over again.

Easter…. just isn’t that important.   I don’t know if it’s because Christmas is SUCH a big deal that I don’t have the energy to engage in another interfaith spiritual quest.  Or if it’s because Passover is such a much more meaningful holiday within the Jewish tradition – as opposed to Hannukah, which is a much less religiously significant holiday.   Maybe it’s that I have this holiday quota – and Christmas is necessary in December.  But in the spring, Passover is so much bigger that Easter tends to sort of fade into obscurity.

That being said, I’ve got eighteen eggs to hide, and three baskets to assemble on Saturday night.  But the biggest part of the holiday, for me, is going to be making sure that the kids can celebrate Easter with my family while still observing the kosher for Passover restrictions.