Easter holidays used to be my favourite holidays of the year, because they seemed so unexpected and so very long and chocolate-filled. Now, I feel like celebrating processed sugar and mass-marketing isn’t the most amazing thing to get small children to do…so I often ask students to imagine what kind of celebration they would invent if Easter had never existed.
Really interesting writers like GS Frazer and Joseph Campbell wrote very long, complicated books many years ago about how various other cultures around the world celebrated the changing seasons, and they were fascinated by how alike all the celebrations were. It seems as though we have an innate ability to mark the passing of time in the same way, like we’re hard-wired for these festivals.
So imagine that there was never an ‘Easter,’ and think about what this time of year is special for. What’s changing? What does that mean for the people, the animals, the plants? What would it mean to you if you had no electricity, no internet, and your whole world was what was just outside your window?
Enjoy – and keep writing and sending work!
Kathy