Rising

This weekend was Easter, of course. No longer being of a Christian faith and having a convention to attend in Columbus, I didn't really remember until today, when I realized that all my favorite candy would be on sale at the grocery store. A few of my beau's classmates invited him to church with them, which (I believe) the former Catholic declined. If we had been at home, we would have had lunch or dinner with our families, and that's really what I miss the most. As zany and irritating as our respective clans may be, the weight of cultural holidays is centered around family and togetherness, especially for secular people, atheists, or people whose religious paths don't celebrate that particular holiday. For many years when I was growing up, Easter Sunday was the day that we took our family photograph, and it still feels somewhat strange to not see my mother's family that day. 

But Easter still happens here in Ohio, and in many ways the season is more overt; maybe because of the preponderance of giant old Catholic churches in my new area and the streams of people I saw tracing the Stations of the Cross, maybe because of the extravagant flowers and blooming trees everywhere. As Christmas is the season of preparation and anticipation, Easter is the season of promises making good and tangible results. It is easy to feel inspired by the newness around me,  it is simple to enact the rites of spring in the everyday, and that is my religion.