Easter: America’s global holiday

Image by faith goble via Flickr

As I mixed the American PAAS egg dye and put all the English Cadbury chocolates in one basket — a basket made in the Philippines and purchased from my local Pier 1 — I could not help but wonder: Where does Easter come from?

Or, more importantly, where is it going? Today, Easter is celebrated around the world, from Beirut to Jerusalem. Even Australians happily celebrate this spring holiday, made all the richer by the importation of European bunnies to their South Pacific island nation.

I checked Google News and wrote down these headlines on my Hilton cocktail napkin: “Pope Leads Catholics Into Easter,” “Christians in Kerala celebrate Easter,” “Christians celebrate Easter in Jerusalem,” “Swedish church unveils Lego Jesus statue for Easter,” and “U.S. captain held by pirates is freed.”

I drew a line from the pirate headline to the one about the pope, and then I drew a little cartoon rabbit hopping along that line, chasing an iPhone. Around the word “Kerala,” I doodled a Russian Faberge egg, and then I chewed off the corners of the napkin and made a Bugs Bunny face — something recognized around the world, thanks to the global ubiquity of Warner Bros. cartoons.

What these headlines are saying, I said to myself, is that it doesn’t matter if you’re the Pope on your golden throne or a Somali sea pirate listening to Trinidad pop music on your Zune. On Easter Sunday, we are all one. We are, in effect, a boiled egg.