Hey, Rocky!

Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!

It’s 5:45 a.m. on Easter Sunday, and in my geographic location, that means Christians of all denominations—but most dutifully, Catholics—are preparing for sunrise mass.

Sunrise at Rexhame Beach, 2024.

It is not by coincidence that Easter and Passover share days every year; it is evidence of cultural persistence and evolution. As some note, the rabbit and the egg are Pagan representations, incorporated within the Christian cultural motif. The tree and yule of Christmas, as well.

The motivations for adopting these symbols have been softened into friendly overtures, meant to draw the Pagans into accepting Christianity. But material history tells it differently. Through its rise to prominence in Europe, Christianity has not assimilated outsider cultures as the first option. The rabbit and the egg were not so much welcomed as imposed upon Christian Easter symbolism, through cultural resistance.

To consumers it is the last traditional candy holiday until Halloween, and the last gifting holiday. The American summer holidays (Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day) involve food, alcohol, parades, and patriotism. We don’t ritually give each other gifts on these holidays.

There is another spring holiday that is less-observed, even though it could have been almost as commercialized as Halloween: May Day.

May Day was once celebrated in the U.S. My grandmother shared memories of delivering May Baskets to her neighbors when she was a child. The May Basket was the reverse of Halloween, where instead of going door-to-door for treats, one left baskets at their neighbors’ houses, filled with baked goods and small gifts.

I am not sure why Americans stopped doing that. I can think of several possible, material reasons: the flu epidemic, the Great Depression, suburban development, and increasing mobility; all would potentially disrupt the practice.

When a custom is no longer practiced, it may still remain in symbolic exchange, but that which was re-presented through the ritual disappears. This re-presentation, this manifestation through action and word, makes the phenomenon real again and meaningful.

We lost a reciprocity, when we stopped practicing May Day gifting rituals. Not just in the exchange on that date, but across the calendar, with Halloween. Reciprocity is a form of sociality so fundamental there are emotions related to it. One senses obligation, perhaps guilt, when a reciprocal loop has not been closed.

The Jews keep a lunar calendar, while the Christians imposed a solar temporal hegemony over the world. But like Passover, Easter is tied to the first full moon after the spring equinox. Unlike Passover, Easter is anchored to Sunday. Perhaps to reinforce the narrative of Friday crucifixion/Sunday ascension (that’s not three days!)?

In reality, we don’t have any idea what day of the week, by our calendar, this crucifixion took place. But the hegemony of the temporal construction matters so much that the obvious error in the dogma is ignored by all but Orthodoxy.

There is no 7-day cycle that can be reliably discerned from nature. The lunar cycle is 29 days, the solar 365.25. Neither divide evenly by seven. Time, as we live it, is a cultural construction.

We all exist outside this construction, but through our mutual acceptance and understanding, this construction becomes real. A person may choose to try to live outside the construction, but would encounter an ever-present state of not quite fitting in and being forced to assent.

The re-presentation of Monday by everyone else makes Monday. The frequency of the re-presentation makes Monday mundane. That’s kind of how cultural hegemony works, it regulates behaviors in such ways that most people never think about it happening and even when they do, they find there’s not much they can do to go against it.

Happy First Full Moon of Spring Feasting Ritual. Magical stuff.