So it is Easter this weekend. I am more aware of it this year because last week I was in Rome as Christian holy week began. It was Palm Sunday. As I sat in a cafe with a friend we saw hundreds of people file past us carrying palm leaves or olive tree branches. Earlier as we had walked toward the Vatican, it had felt a little like Madinah on a Friday at noon: Thousands of people on the street all walking in one direction at a fast pace.
Looking at them I realized how little I knew about Easter. I also realized with some shame that I was a little surprised to see so many people gathered to pray. Living in Britain and France, it is easy to get the impression that religion is an affiliation rather than a vital part of daily life. For years I have associated Easter with chocolate eggs, traffic jams and the chance to go away for a long weekend. Yet Easter is the most important of Christian festivities. Of course it is celebrated in churches in Britain and France; it is just that they do it a little more subtly than in Italy and Spain.
Palm Sunday is the Sunday before Easter. It is a feast day that commemorates the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, when the crowds greeting him waved palm fronds at him and laid them on the ground beneath his feet to carpet his path. Modern day Catholics celebrate this feast with a procession and a special mass. The palm fronds are sacramentals; they are blessed by the church and carried home by the congregation as objects to help them focus their prayers and devotion.
There is so much drama in Catholicism. As a child in Geneva I was rather envious of my Catholic friends. Their religious festivities seemed to be so much more fun than ours. First there was Christmas with all its magic. My sister and I were desperate to have a Christmas tree with all its lights and decorations; we too wanted to wake up in the morning and unwrap present after present like our school friends did. But it was not for us. Easter was easier. Somehow our parents turned a blind eye to painting eggs and going on Easter hunts; that was seen as harmless fun.
Eid seemed very dull by contrast. There was so little mythology and ceremony around it. This was at a time when we Muslims in Europe were very isolated, a time before satellite television and the Internet. It is difficult to perceive it now, but as we had so little access to our home culture, it became hard to identify with it. I was the lone Muslim in my class, the only girl not to have a Christian name like Marie or Dominique. At home, we mixed with a handful of other Muslim families and our parents tried very hard to create some feeling of community for us. When Eid came along they tried to conjure up some of the joy of the Eids of their childhood, but it could never match up.
Then one year, Eid Al- Adha fell during the school holidays and we were able to go to Madinah for the celebrations. How different it felt to be surrounded by my cousins and to play from morning until night! The Saudi Kingdom is the magic kingdom for children. They are doted on, petted and spoilt to their hearts' content. We were plied with unlimited quantities of sweets and allowed to stay up until the early hours. It was riotous. Then the moment came when the lamb that had been tethered in the front yard and which we had played with for days had to be slaughtered. I was indignant. For a few moments I contemplated becoming a vegetarian but in the true spirit of childish compromise I decided that I would continue to eat meat but never the meat of an animal I had been personally acquainted with. We were not given presents wrapped up in shiny paper and ribbons; instead we were given plain white envelopes by every adult relative. Each envelope contained fresh notes - cash for us to spend. It lacked the instant gratification of Christmas presents; you could not play with bank notes, but you were also spared the disappointment of receiving a present you didn't like.
As I grew older I realized that what I envied were the pagan rituals. The Easter bunny and Easter eggs predate Christianity and are in fact pagan customs that have little to do with religion but are celebrations of spring and fertility. Just as the Christmas tree is a pagan symbol associated with the winter solstice. It is a mistake to think of these traditions in religious terms. Does it make you a Christian to have a Christmas tree in your home or to eat a chocolate Easter egg? There are millions of households who celebrate Christmas every year and feast on chocolate every Easter and yet do not so with any religious conviction but out of a sense of tradition. It's the fun element that's the hook. Happy holidays as Americans like to say, the festivities around Christmas and Easter may have Judaeo-Christian origins, since Christmas comes around the same time as Hanukah and Easter Pesach, but they have become more inclusive and universal, a kind of one size-fits- all festivity. They are a chance for families to celebrate whatever it is they believe in, be it religious faith or simply gratitude for being together under the same roof.
The counter-side is that by de-emphasizing the religious aspects, the holidays have become excuses for rampant consumerism. In Britain, 80 million Easter eggs will be sold over the Easter period. There is even a chocolatier on London's Piccadilly selling an Easter egg with the obscene price tag of £50,000. The Easter weekend is second only to Christmas in terms of retail sales. Both Christmas and Easter have become an excuse to spend. Just as our own festivities at Eid Al Fitr and Eid Al-Adha have lost much of their sense of communion and joy. It makes me sad to receive so many Eid greetings as text messages and e-cards; they involve so little genuine emotion.
As for my envy of my Catholic school friends, I got over that a long time ago. Quite the opposite; the older I get the more I appreciate the simplicity of Islam and the more I long for pared-down religious experience. Let us each pray and worship peacefully alongside each other, each to their own as the saying goes.
