Easter

There's only one time a year people can don the pastel colors and call them our own: Easter. Easter Sunday is the whole reason why we have Spring Break (that and Passover but mostly Easter). Or had, I should say.

While Easter is technically a serious Christian celebration, culturally it just seems to be a celebration of spring altogether. With bright-colored packages, Easter candies look especially vibrant with the little ducklings and vibrant grass after a long, long winter. Easter might not have been quite as commercialized as Christmas has been, but sometimes it comes close. Easter represents its own culture, folklore and set of traditions far removed from the actual idea of Christmas. This is an interesting product of our consumer culture. Easter is supposed to be a bigger deal than Christmas (after all, it only represents the cornerstone of Christianity) but it's easy to forget that.

Of course, it's not too unusual that Easter is a spring celebration. After all, cultures have celebrated some form of spring celebration for thousands of years through pagan religions. It's obvious that Easter's placement was no accident as Christians originally wanted to compete with pagan spring celebrations; the same, after all, was done with Christmas.

Easter and Christmas do have many similarities besides the fact that they are both Christian celebrations. Both are a time to be spoiled, although usually this is less so with Easter. Both are a time to spend time with family members although, in my experience, Easter celebrations are usually much smaller. Both are also the time when non-practicing Christians take it upon themselves to cram themselves into church services they wouldn't have usually attended before.

Whatever the case is, I do like my break and celebrating these very fun traditions.