What's so happy about Easter?

Those who know me personally will know I was raised a Greek Orthodox Christian, and this time of year was always a time of tradition and family and holiness. In Greek, we say Christos Anesti, meaning "Christ has risen", customary in acknowledging Christ's resurrection. Over the years, I strayed from the religious dogma, which, ironically, has brought me closer to Jesus Christ than ever before. After stepping outside the dogmatic sphere, I see how perfunctory Christos Anesti has become; it is the message of Christ that was to live forever in our hearts and minds, a message wholly ignored by most, if not all of us, for we are distracted by the image of some supernatural being rising from the dead and ascending to some mythical place in the sky.

I wish to share with you some of the traditions associated with Easter, so that I may highlight the absurdity of our practicing them. First, it is customary for us to fast during the Holy Week - I learned later in life that we are supposed to be doing so for forty days, similar to Lent - thus we were always taught to abstain from eating meat and dairy during this time. I was never actually told why we were to do this, except, perhaps, that God would punish me for my disobedience. I don't know how many people are aware of fasting as a means to learn restraint, that when we fast, we learn to do without, and thus learn to appreciate the common plight of most of our brothers and sisters who are forced to do without, as they live with very little. If we can swear off meat for a week, or forty days, why not gasoline, or television, or promiscuity, or shopping? How absurd to practice a benign custom for a given period of time, then resume consuming ourselves silly; such is life within the confines of the Empire.

Next, we reenact the events of the crucifixion, probably because we're a group of sadistic fucks. It's not enough that the ravaged body of Jesus Christ was nailed to a wooden cross for everyone to see as an example of what happens to those who dare challenge the established social order; we have to relive this gruesome chain of events year after year in effigy. What's worse, we worship the image of his agonizing death! We kneel before the instrument used in his murder! Who are we to renounce violence when we deify it through the crucifixion? Is this why weapons drive our global economy?

Finally, we rejoice on Easter Sunday because Christ has ascended directly to Heaven where he will live for all eternity, because he is the son of God, placed on this Earth to meet a horrible end so that we may live in sin. It is customary for us Greeks to celebrate the occasion by roasting a whole lamb over an open flame. Once upon a time, we sacrificed the lamb ourselves; nowadays, they can be found hanging in butcher shop windows en masse, further detaching us from the lives we destroy to satisfy our insatiable consumptive needs. Every year, we have more than enough food to make ourselves fat and happy, feeling blessed to have been born on the side of the conqueror. One year, I suggested we feed the leftovers to those who might appreciate a little food in their bellies, those who struggle to find a single meal in a week, let alone three in a day - you can imagine the reaction I received after posing this idea. Did Jesus not tell those of us in luxury to help those in need? Is it not absurd to celebrate the message of Jesus Christ by shoveling heaps of food in our mouths, then laying to waste whatever is left?

Lost in all the fanfare is the message of love and compassion Jesus Christ tried to convey before his untimely demise at the hands of the authorities, a fate similar to that suffered by the likes of John Lennon, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and Mahatma Gandhi. The Holy Week of Easter has become nothing more than a perfunctory exercise shrouded in images of chocolate and eggs and fluffy bunnies and a dead man on a cross, another holiday on the calendar highlighting more and more to consume. If it is true that Jesus Christ is to return, I wonder if people ponder what he - or she, for all we know - would have to say about our war economy, or our domestic violence, or our ill will towards one another, or how the rest of the world suffers so that we may live in luxury, or how we voluntarily enslave ourselves to afford said luxury.

This time, when we decree "Christ has risen", can we think about what we're saying? If Jesus Christ has, in fact, risen, why are we constantly throwing him back into his grave?