Oh yeah, it's Easter, right?

It's a beautiful spring day today. I suppose it must be Easter, which strikes me as a little funny: it's not something I thought of at all until I gave it some thought, if you know what I mean. "Say, you didn't have to work Friday because it was Good Friday... so... that must mean that today, the Sunday after Good Friday is... Easter...."

This is the kind of thing that happens when you're as secular a dude as I am.

The first version of the sentence you're reading right now went, "The problem with being an atheist is that we have lousy holidays," which I thought was sort of clever. But then I started listing the few holidays we have and I realized that there was Independence Day and Labor Day and Veteran's Day--and that Thanksgiving, despite the name, is basically a secular holiday. So that left me with Christmas and Good Friday/Easter as being the big religious holidays on the calendar, and let's face facts, shall we: you could quietly take away every manger scene in America (let's pretend we waved a magic wand and simply vanished them), and who would notice? No, seriously: I know you're thinking Bill O'Reilly would make a huge stink, and of course he would if you actually told him you were taking away the crèches--that's why I stipulated the magic wand, you know. He'd raise a fuss if you raised a fuss; if you filed a First Amendment lawsuit or wrote a letter to the editor or painted a sign and marched up and down on a sidewalk, he'd be all over that like Elvis on a peanut-butter-and-nanner sandwich. No, I'm saying if the crèches were simply vanished like Salvadoran dissidents, you'd have a few puzzled devout Christians, and everyone else would get along with their shopping. Honestly, at this point if you got rid of the Christmas season and the Christmas holiday, it would probably be a boon to the Christians--they could get back to their masses and vigils and whatnot. Be hell on Hasbro and Hallmark, of course.

So this is it, the big religious holiday on the American calendar, or maybe second biggest after Super Bowl Sunday, and I could have droned right through it if I hadn't remembered that I got a three-day weekend thanks to it. So I guess I'm grateful, after a fashion. It's been a good weekend even though I never got around to doing my taxes like I planned and didn't really get out with friends as much as I might have expected. (No, they're not religious either; matter of fact, they were probably drinking and getting laid. I think that was the major agenda they had planned.)

For me, it's a Sunday much like any other. I'll see if I can get some writing done, enjoy my coffee, look out the big window as Smelly Cat and enjoy the clear blue sky and people enjoying the sun. And whatever y'all like doing on a Sunday, or an Easter Sunday, I hope you're having a good time doing it. Happy Easter or something.