You have to come back

Wednesday 4/9/25

This is good. From a piece that I started today. Likely will finish tomorrow. Ten minutes of moving the fingers.

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The holidays I love the most are Halloween and Christmas—as I’m sure many people would say—and Easter, which gives the other two a competitive push, and is a day whose spirit I seek to keep in my heart all of the year round, as Scrooge learned to do with what became his treasured Yule.

The close of each day has a tinge of Easter in my life. Tomorrow I may become anew, because I can do better than I did with the day that is ending. I can be better. These things I am free to do—if I am able to do them—in every aspect of my life, be it artistically, emotionally, mentally, morally, and spiritually.

That is my goal with an outcome I’m able to control: Be better tomorrow than I’ve ever been. Work at it.

I think people who have known what Stephen Foster once called hard times—as he then beseeched them not to come again—are of a greater likelihood to take to Easter and embrace its essence. The flitters and shirkers aren’t cut out for Easter. But if you’re someone who believes it’s better to go up stairs than down them in the larger schema of life, then Easter has to mean something to you.

As a kid, we’d go over to my dad’s mother’s house after the plastic eggs containing candy treats had been plucked from their hiding spots, and a quantify of those goodies consumed; not a gorging worthy of Halloween night, but a solid few mouthfuls. I always remember this being later in the afternoon than it probably was. Or else the curtains were just drawn. Invariably, a religious epic would be playing on the television, to be followed by another, and another, such that when we finally went home again and Christ had been killed three times over, I would be uncertain as to whether or not there was a rule that these films all had to be many hours in length as well as frightening—more so, oddly, than actual horror films, which tended to be fun, troubled as I remained by Bela Lugosi’s face rotting away in Return of the Vampire.

Seeing the man nailed to the cross wasn’t fun. The heavens were dark, you’d get a crack of thunder, as if this world within the movie possessed sufficient verisimilitude that whatever was going on in there was about to leak out of the set and shave some days off the real world where you sat, agog, and nearly forgetting to swallow that jelly bean that had turned to paste in your mouth.

Homes of these older relatives featured at least one painting of a saint. Often, it hung in the spare bedroom, so if your parents went away for a weekend and left you there, you were going to have to deal with this supernatural being—they had a halo, after all—staring at you as you tried to fall asleep, which was bad enough, and then doing God knows what (sorry) as you slept. This made for less than refreshing slumbers. In the morning, having made it through, I pulled a Handel, declaring, “Death, where is thy sting?/Oh grave, where is thy victory?” By which I mean, I’d respond to whomever had asked that I was fine and eat the eggs that they provided as part of the breakfast.

Easter is a holiday in which death is central. Death happens, and it is not considered terrible, an idea that can mess us up in trying to process it. But that’s because with death—and the close of the day—comes the opportunity of tomorrow. We are talking metaphor here, but when, really—if we understand anything for what it is—are we not? That which is true is meant to be extrapolated. As for our lives: This over here needs to be cashed out so that we’re able to start again. The start is not a given. It doesn’t happen on its own. We have to be conscious of the opportunity in order to realize that we should make the most of it, and then set about whatever that entails.

None of this has much to do with religion, nor—gasp—does Easter, which would appear to be the most misleading thing we can say about the day, but anything that automatically leaves anyone behind—including those who are not religious—is not so good a thing as it can be, and I think Easter is pretty great. Scary, sure, but also uplifting—depending on how you process the information and the truths it wishes to give you, so that you may not only live better, but become more alive each day. And when we become more alive, we become more human, and we help others in these imperative ventures as well. Also, you can make your latest attempt to convince yourself that Cadbury Eggs aren’t disgusting, bewitched as you are for another season by the tourmaline foil and odd appeal of the chocolate/facsimile poultry byproduct concept, only to pay the gastrointestinal price, then rise up 365 days later to give them another go, the lesson still not learned.

Better yet, there’s the watching of Easter-inflected horror films. Remember: At the core of Easter is a ghost story. A man is murdered. His body is put in a cave. A spirit makes a round of visits. Three days after his internment, the man comes back from the dead.

Are we not tasked with doing the same within the scope of our own journeys? Is that not how we expand the range of our possibilities? Certainly inwardly, as a person. You have to come back. You can’t give in nor stay down. This isn’t about popping out of the coffin—it’s about carrying on and doing better than one had been previously. That takes strength, and, yes, spirit.

So let’s consider some films rife with spirit—and spirits—and many returns from the land of the dead back to the realm of the living that we can watch in the home here at Eastertide.