Daily Report: Monday Vinnie Blogging

Vinnie and Ivan had an Easter Egg hunt at the house yesterday. (It's only a real Easter Egg hunt if you do it in your pajamas, I think.) Boy, he is growing up.

Easter in The Philippines doesn't include the pagan symbology of rabbits and eggs. They are not familiar at all with the Easter Bunny.

Actually, I also noticed that Filipinos are much more observant of Good Friday than Easter Sunday. Epril and her family climbed a mountain for Jesus at 4 a.m. on Friday in order to do the Stations, but church on Easter Sunday was much more optional. (I think it has to do with Filipinos' attraction to the cothurnal side of Catholicism... and life in general. They enjoy their religion like they enjoy their movies and music: With lots of heartache and longing, crushing intensity of emotion, tsuris and hardship, with ultimate catharsis and revival. Not at all like the stoic face that we Presbyterians wear for Christ's suffering; our attachment to the rood is merely spiritual... not physical.)

I'm sure that you knew that Easter was scheduled to fall on the vernal equinox to give Christians an alternate holiday to the pagan equinox rituals they were still performing... but what of the autumnal equinox? Why is there no holiday scheduled to fall on the autumnal equinox? Actually, there is: Michaelmas. It used to be the second most important holiday in the Catholic Church. The Feast of St. John, the third most important Catholic Holiday, falls on the summer solstice, and Christmas, the fourth most important holiday, was scheduled to supplant the winter solstice.