It's Holyculture Friday! Issue 1

Holyculture: The industry and science of holiness and Christ-related topics. Holiculturists work and conduct research in the disciplines of church attendance, social hour, greeters, favorite Sons and virginal women. The word is composite, from two words, Holy, meaning "sacred", and the word culture. Like NPR's Science Friday, Holyculture Friday exists to educate and spark discussion on the science of Christology. Holyculture Friday is absolutely for children. Because Jesus loves the little children.  All the children of the world, actually.

Today's topic: The Seven Deadly Sins of Easter.

I know today is Friday, and you 'Miss-Jackson-if-you're-nasty' people expect me to post something naughty, but DUDE.  It is Good Friday.  God notices when you blow off Good Friday.  I only needed to see "The Passion of the Christ" once to feel like Jesus can get a little respect today, so today is Holyculture Friday, and Whoreticulture Friday will return to its regularly scheduled programming next week.  (Maybe I'll talk about 'The Shocker' next week to make it up to you.) 

Yesterday, April Fools Day, I posted six lies and a truth.  Some of you thought I posted all true stories as an April Fools joke, and in retrospect, I wish I would've thought of it!  You clever monkeys.  However, one was wrong - my mother did not poison the Mennonites with undercooked pork, and even if she had, they would've been too polite to bring it up later.  And yes, my dog Mandy really did gut that rabbit on Easter Sunday.  Ish.

This Good Friday story is actually a reprint of a column I wrote a few years ago and ran in my small local newspaper, back in the day when I had a regular newspaper column called "Diary of a Mad Housewife".  Love your local newspapers!

The Seven Deadly Sins of Easter - (I think this ran in 2004)

As I look upon another Easter, with the hundred or so little foil wrappers laying around the house and the irritating plastic eggs I will find off and on for the next twelve months or so, I've come to realize that Easter has become yet another over-commercialized holiday.  I can see the temptation to go crazy at Christmas, since it is based on the birthday of Jesus.  Who hasn’t gone a little overboard at a birthday party?  Easter, however, seems a bit sacrilege.  Are we really to celebrate Christ’s rising from the dead with huge Hershey bars and a costumed rabbit?

This Easter, my family celebrated in the usual way, full of chocolate and hard-boiled eggs and spilled purple egg dye on the kitchen floor, but it was full of religious implications as well, which I can easily recant for you in the form of the Seven Deadly Sins.

First, we have Envy.  I can tell you that I was really jealous of the kids’ Easter baskets as I was loading them up.  At what age did I stop getting an Easter basket?  My mom was always good for loads of candy, which she stopped giving me around the age of thirteen when I got lippy.  Just to be fair, I got the hubby and myself the 4,000-calorie oversized Symphony bar to set out with the baskets so the kids didn’t think the bunny looked down on us.

Then there is Greed, which I exemplified perfectly as I stole chocolate from the kids baskets even after I devoured most of the Symphony bar myself.  I tell myself the kids don’t need that much chocolate, but let’s be honest – I was on a big-time chocolate binge, kids’ happiness be damned.

Of course, this leads us to Gluttony and Lust.  Need I say more?  One would think the recent Girl Scout Cookie episodes would have toned down my need to feed, but if Mother’s Day involves any food, I will have consumed more calories in three months than there are dollars in the national debt.

For the deadly sin of Pride, I paid the price.  When on assignment to photograph the Living Last Supper at the Methodist Church, I was “with the media.”  I mingled with the disciples, getting their quotes, feeling the power of my pen to make Judas look good and John look bad.  During the recreation of the table scene for pictures, I looked through my lens to get the best shot, and sat down in a pew to get a better angle.  It only took a moment to realize I got the point, literally - I actually sat on Jesus’ thorny crown.  Not many people can say that, but hand to God, it happened, and you can just ask Reverend Alecia Williams.  I have the scars to prove it.

The sin of Anger goes to my son.  He decided during Good Friday services that he needed to drop a nail in the bucket and pray with us, and when he didn’t go, he had a huge conniption in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer.  During the Egg Hunt at the parsonage, he got mad at the Reverend of our church because he was wearing a bunny costume and trying to shake his hand.  What really made him mad was when he was coming down off of his chocolate high during Easter Sunday services and we took him up for communion…he wanted to drink all of the little cups of juice, and when we stopped him, he had a big fit, which many people in the congregation thought was cute, and we thought was humiliating.  He also yelled at the lady sitting next to us that it was NOT a dog on his sweater, it was an ALLIGATOR.  It was a dog, but junkies get confused.

Finally, we come to Sloth, which is what the afternoon of Easter Sunday is all about.  We try to get out and do something, but every time we got active, we were thwarted in our efforts.  I guess all that sitting in church really took it out of us.

And so Easter has passed us by.  I realize now that all of the chocolate I’ve ingested will be my cross to bear in the coming months, but I take comfort in the fact that God wants me to repent, and he will forgive us for all of our sins.  If I could only be so lucky.

Happy Good Friday, everyone, and have a blessed Easter.  See you next week!