Easter In The Philippines

It's Holy Week here in The Philippines, so everyone is dusting off their whips and 400-pound crosses for a great week of misery, pain, spaghetti dinners, and long walks up really steep hills at 4 in the morning.

Easter is the most important holiday in the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Filipinos take Easter and crank it up to 11.

Easter in The Philippines is never dull. First you've got the guys who nail themselves to crosses. Real nails, real blood. Then you've got all the flagellants. Real whips, real blood. Then you've got the rest of the country who just does Via Dolorosa up the biggest hill they can find. Real steep. Real cramps.

But also, of course, Easter is a time for family, vacations, relaxing your aching feet on a sandy tropical beach, and lots of yummy food.

But don't try mentioning The Easter Bunny, Easter baskets, or chocolate eggs: Nobody here has ever heard of them. If you want to talk about an Easter parade without blood (fake or otherwise), a crown of thorns, and Roman soldiers, nobody will know what you're talking about. The only reason kids might be crawling around the back yard on their hands and knees in this country is if they have a cross strapped to their back that weighs more than they do.

So welcome to Holy Week Philippines style, everybody. I'll be sleeping in, and the heaviest thing I'll be carrying is my coffee mug and the steepest thing I'll be climbing is the stairs to my office... but I'll buck it up and manage to make it through several lashings of Ma Nila's fantastic spaghetti dinner.