Never On Sunday: Whose Holiday is it Anyway?

It's Easter.  My on again, off again relationship with the church is muddied by this particular holiday.  This time a few years ago I was working for the church and blind sided by a well-meaning parishioner that didn't like the content of my children's newsletter.  Apparently, it contained the truth about Easter.  Not the part the Christians swiped from whatever civilization preceeded them, the truth that Easter is about renewal, refreshment, and rebirth.  I shared stories of the ways different countries celebrate Easter and how our Easter came to be. 

I used the Charater Sketches book to pick an animal and biblical character as I always did.  Each month since I started the newsletter there was always an inclusion of the rules of the department concerning trips and activities, various FAQs.  It was pretty much the same newsletter it had always been, except this time, I guess someone actually read it because I got cornered after a meeting and by the time it was over, I was assured my little newsletter that I made a total of 20 copies of and stuck in the pocket near the children's section of the education buildling was going to cause the downfall of civilization as we know it.

On her way to me, she gathered support from the pastor's wife.  A passive aggressive woman with a jealous streak a mile wide.  The pastor's wife, not the woman.  The woman, was a worrier and a control queen.  If it could go wrong it would, because we didn't do it the way she'd wanted it done.

The whole confrontation didn't sit well with me.  I was left feeling ashamed and angry.  As an employee of the church, they had entrusted me with the care of their most precious commodity--their children.  I was on the brink of sending them all straight to hell in Moses's basket.

I wish I'd kept the newsletter.  I told her I would destroy them.  All 20 of them, for no one had taken one.  No one ever did.  I'd been asked to do a children's newsletter and there it was for six months, never read or ever looked at until this fateful holiday.  A time of year that can be claimed by just about every religion on the planet.

I guess I just don't get it.  At the same time, this woman and the pastor's wife insist on doing an Easter Egg Hunt every year.  There are games, toys, surprises, food and sandwiched in there is a vain attempt at sharing the "real" Easter story.  The pastor groups everyone willing together in the church and tells the "real" Easter story in his shorts and golf shirt never looking anyone particular in the eye.

So I wonder whose holiday it is anyway?  Somehow the picture has been muddied for me along with everything else about the church that just doesn't make sense to me any more.