Holidays, Faith and Family

It's the week after Easter, the chocolate is probably half eaten by now (if it's not gone completely), and we are back into our normal routines.

I had practically forgotten about Easter for a while, until one of my Google + followers, Dan Brill showed me a post he had written last year on Good Friday about what it's like to be former Catholic during the Easter season.

You don't realize just how much most holidays in the Western world revolve around religion until you give up religion.The post was so good, that despite the fact that Easter has already been over for four days now, I would like to share it with you (I have his permission to publish it to the blog):

Good Friday. It’s pretty much the same every year. I’m usually the last guy out of the office. Other people have ducked out early for church with their families, or have at least conveniently found religion on a nice afternoon leading into a long weekend. If all else fails, it’s opening day for a lot of teams. But I hang around for a while to tinker with the code, the spreadsheets, and the data. Sure, the market has been lousy lately, and margins are razor thin. It’s stressful. But when I do my job right, it all adds up. It’s rational. 

Stressful though it is, it’s easier to deal with than the childhood memories of being dragged off to church during Easter week. On Thursday. And Friday. And Saturday. And Sunday. I’ve come to think of it as the week of the bleeding knees: stations of the cross, and rosaries, and crucifixes, and altar bells, and the smell of incense, and confession, and being told that He died for your sins and without him you are unclean in God’s eyes, but hey I’m just a kid and I didn’t do anything, and you have no idea what you are saying young man, andwe aren’t even worthy to be washed in His Blood, and He gave that to you, and you aren’t even grateful, and the ones that can’t be forgiven are those that were taught the Faith but turned away. You have to have Faith!

Whoa. Calm down. That’s a heavy trip to lay on a kid. So I have to have Faith. OK, I will. I’ll try to have Faith. I want to have Faith. But there are parts of the story that just aren’t adding up. It must be my fault. I must not understand it. So I think about it. I read more. I look at the evidence. What the hell is wrong with me? This still isn’t making sense. 

Faith. Everyone I know and love seems to have it. My family, and the kids at school, and my friends, and every grownup I know has it. And I’d love to have it. But I can’t pretend it, can I? Or is everyone just pretending it?