Friday, April 25, 2014

Easta

I don't get Easta.

Apparently Easter is a pretty big deal. It is one of only three days in the entire year that the NH State Liquor Commission deems important enough to close all its stores. Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving. And you know, given American culture and the callousness of big business, even those three days are not sacred. I can only hope that I am no longer a puppet of the NHSLC when they get to the point when 365 days a year are a requirement.

The NH State Liquor Commission is one of the greediest, cold-hearted and uncaring organizations on the planet, especially when it comes to their employees. So you know it is heavy duty stuff for them to close on Easta. Must be a lot of pressure to do so. Otherwise I would have been wearing my Easter bonnet at the register on April 20.

There is a lot of frenzy connected with the approach to Easta. There's a lot of buying going on, as Scrooge himself said while licking his chops, as the Ghost of Christmas something or other was showing him situations to teach him a lesson.

A lesson Scrooge learned, by the way. A lesson the New Hampshire State Liquor Commission will never learn.

A hellacious amount of booze got sold on the two days just before Easter. Insanity. A lot of stories were told of family get togethers. Large family get togethers.

One guy told us that he was having over forty people to the house. He would be shooting off canons and he had a Mexican trio that would be performing for his guests.

I did not make that up.

I get Christmas. Magical time of year, lights, trees, presents. Attempts to take the sting out of winter. It is not a religious thing for most of the people who celebrate it. It is merely an opportunity to destroy their credit ratings, enjoy family and friends in a kind of pleasant LSD atmosphere, and to gaze silently into baubles and bangles and Christmas lights and reflect.

Easta is not a religious thing for most people either. But it seems to take on the same magnitude of meaning as Christmas does for most people.

I don't get it. To me, Easta is Christmas with eggs.

4th of July, Memorial Day, Labor Day - these loom large for most people as well. But there is an air of insanity about them. Desperate release, a determined conviction to kick life in the teeth and get crazy. Or just relax.

These holidays do not have that family feel about them.

Easta does.

I don't get it.

I like it because I like anything that celebrates family over commerce. Anything that promotes meaningful celebrations that make life real; make life worth living.

It's just that when I do the Christmas thing, I get a warm feeling inside. A glow not originated by or connected to whiskey consumption. Thanksgiving is The King Of All Holidays. No doubt there.

But Christmas makes me feel good. I enjoy it.

Easta to me is enjoyable as an excuse for getting the family together but it is no different than a weekend barbecue as far as my soul goes.

Maybe I'm missing something.

Karma-wise it is a very good thing that so many people get all family-devoted on Easter. We as human beings need all of that, as much of that as we can get. When that many people simultaneously put out a loving vibe, a human vibe, it shifts the evil vibe in the world just a tiny bit.

Although we are fighting a losing battle on an exponentially increasing scale, it is vitally important as often as possible to poke a finger in the eye of those who would strip us of our humanity.

Hope you had a good, a loving, a family oriented  Easta.

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