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This week: Easter Than You Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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My mom used to say that Greek Easter was later because then you get stuff cheaper.
-Amy Sedaris
Somehow we just don't make the same boisterous fun of Holy Week that we do of Christmas. No one plans to have a holly, jolly Easter.
-Frederica Mathewes-Green
Passover and Easter are the only Jewish and Christian holidays that move in sync, like the ice skating pairs we saw during the winter Olympics.
-Marvin Olasky
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I don't pay attention to moving holidays.
Therefore, Easter and all the Jewish and Muslim holidays, along with Chinese New Year and Cinco de Mayo, always come as a surprise to me. Wait, what? Cinco de Mayo is always on the fifth of May? Pfft. Tell that to Corona.
So it was that I was blissfully chilling in the Fortress of Turpitude when I got the dreaded email from my cousin: "Hey, come to NYC for Passover on Saturday. Also, Easter is on Sunday!"
Of course, at that point, it was Thursday, and I needed to find a way to travel to the biggest city in the country (also the largest concentration of Jews in the world) on Passover/Easter. Keep in mind that I live 350 miles away from that metropolis.
I ruled out airplanes before I even got to the starting gate. I had this vision, see, and in the vision I was stuck in a middle seat in coach with screaming babies on all sides, and the kid behind me has restless leg syndrome, and her parents to either side are drunker than I am.
No.
I could, I reasoned, take the train - but experience has shown me that trying to get a spot on a train to New York on a holiday weekend with a day's notice is about as likely as winning the lottery without buying a ticket.
That goes double for buses; besides, have you *seen* the New York City bus station? It's a wretched hive of scum and villainy that makes Mos Eisley look like Eden.
I was left with the realization that I'd either have to come up with an excuse I hadn't used before... or drive. I thought about, and discarded, the notion to use the "heart attack" excuse, but then my family would know about my heart attack, and... well, no, that would be bad. And I used the "flu" excuse last year (to be fair, I had the flu, but I can't say I wasn't relieved).
So I got in my car, which has survived three grueling cross-country excursions, and prepared for a nominally six-hour drive.
Six-hour drives are normal for me. When I make the aforementioned cross-country excursions, I try to keep my driving time to six hours a day unless I'm in a real hurry, which is rare.
The problem is, it's Good Friday, it's raining, and that six hour time assumes no heavy traffic or road construction... around Washington, DC, and I-95 north.
Shut up. I can hear you laughing all the way over here. Stop it. Shut up! I *knew* there was going to be traffic.
That knowledge didn't make the nine-hour drive any less hellish. I suppose that some people would consider that my punishment for not being overjoyed to be with my family. (don't get me wrong - I like them a lot. Just not on Easter weekend). And I suppose that if I'm wrong about the whole no-eternal-afterlife thing, I'll get to spend eternity in a traffic jam behind a diesel-belching semi, and it'll rain just enough to make the roads wet and not enough to make windshield wipers do a damn thing.
That was my Friday.
I... won't even mention finding a parking spot in New York. I'm going to block that particular effort entirely out of my mind.
The weekend wasn't a total loss, however. I got to go to one of my favorite beer spots, and once I wasn't driving, things were pretty much okay.
At least until Sunday morning, when my cousin's devoutly Christian wife invited me to go to Easter services.
Those of you who are paying attention will note that I'm not Christian. I am, in fact, only Jewish by culture - I quit practicing long ago, just when I was getting good at it.
The thought of dealing with a church crowd on Easter Sunday filled me with an even more profound sense of dread than the prospect of driving up the Northeast Corridor on a rainy holiday Friday ever did. Not that I'd get struck by lightning or anything; it's the crowd. Also, as I told her, "All I've got are these jeans and t-shirts." (See, in a rare bout of prescience, I figured I'd get invited to an Easter thing, and prepared by not wearing anything but Doctor Who t-shirts and gamer-gray jeans.)
"That's okay," she said. "Come as you are."
Yeah... another thing I should mention is that these days, I have long brown hair and a nice crop of beard whiskers. You don't want me within 50 yards of a church - someone will decide that I need to become part of the iconography. Plus I'm Jewish and I've ridden a camel in Jerusalem. Nope, keep me away from churches.
Besides, I know the kind of church she attends. It's the kind where every year, people dress up for Easter and show up all smiles and hugs, but meanwhile, all the ladies are silently comparing all the other ladies' Easter outfits to each other's and their own. This establishes the ladies in an unspoken pecking order, one that ranks them for all church events until next Easter, when they get to try again. I don't know how the men establish their ranking, but I suspect it's all dependent on their wives' Easter regalia.
Ask them, and they'll deny it. It takes an outsider to spot this sort of thing.
Anyway, I weaseled out of it. "Ooooh," I kvetched. "Too much gefilte fish last night. Oy!"
(For the record, any amount of gefilte fish is too much.)
So I'll leave you with an Easter/Passover joke I heard long ago - with maybe a few modern embellishments.
*clears throat*
Jesus and Moses are chilling in a Brooklyn hipster taphouse when they get to talking about the old times.
"You know what I miss, Jesus?" says Moses.
"What?" says Jesus.
"Miracles. I miss performing all those miracles. They were fun."
Jesus nods slowly. "Yeah," he said. "The miracles were cool."
They drink some more beer, and then Jesus claps Moses on the shoulder. "Hey," he says. "Why don't we go recreate some of those miracles right now?"
"Hey," says Moses. "That's a great idea."
"So what was your favorite miracle?"
Moses strokes his long gray beard, then says, "I guess it was when I parted the Red Sea. Man, that was awesome. The waters just parted, and my people walked across on dry land."
"Yeah, that was pretty cool. Let's do it."
So they take off to Egypt and they're standing at the edge of the Red Sea. Moses lifts up his arms, and the waters part. He lowers them, and the waters come back together. "Yeah!" he cries. "This is fun!" He does it again: lifts to part, lowers to send them crashing back together.
Smiling, he turns to Jesus. "So what was your favorite miracle?"
"Oh, I don't know. I had so many. Loaves and fishes, water into wine, healing the lepers... but I guess my favorite was when I walked on water."
"Oh, yeah, that was a real crowd-pleaser," says Moses. "Let's go do that."
So they trek up to the Sea of Galilee. Jesus stands at the edge of the placid lake and composes himself. Taking a deep breath, he steps out into the Sea. Pretty soon, the water's up to his ankles, up to his calves, up to his knees... he shakes his head in confusion and turns around. "I guess I'm pretty rusty," he says. "Let me try again."
So he closes his eyes and concentrates, then steps out onto the Sea. Again, though, he sinks up to his knees before giving up and turning around.
He scratches his head and looks at Moses. "I don't know what's wrong," he says.
Moses strokes his beard. "Hm, I think I see what the problem is."
"What?" says Jesus.
"Last time," says Moses, "you didn't have those holes in your feet."
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Comedy: April 08, 2015 Issue [#6917]
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