An (Orthodox) Easter blessing to all

Egg fighting, coloring eggs and the commercial benefits of being Orthodox at Easter. A look at one of my favorite holidays

By Ray Hanania

FREE/Humor/Thursday April 25, 2024

I always wondered, why would anyone use the fat side of an egg in shackling? You know, the Easter celebration of “egg fights.”

It’s only one of the many things I think about during the “Easter Season,” which is my favorite holiday of the year.

I’m actually lucky, too. My parents are Palestinian immigrants (legal, by the way) and were Catholic and Greek Orthodox (Antiochian Orthodox, these days). We celebrated both the “traditional Easter” holiday and the “Orthodox Easter” holiday that usually fell one week later (sometimes longer).

Orthodox Easter this year (2024) will follow the end of the Jewish Passover, and be on Sunday May 5, 2024.

For most traditional Christians, the second day of Eastertide or, in the Byzantine Rite, the second day of Bright Week, is just the Monday after Easter.

For the Orthodox, however, the Monday after traditional Easter has a special significance. That’s the day, the Monday after traditional Easter Sunday when all of the Easter decorations and especially the Easter candies like chocolate bunnies, marshmallow Peeps and jelly beans that fill many Easter baskets, go on sale.

It’s not just a small discount. The discounts usually are sold at 75 percent off, which explains why the Orthodox usually have more chocolate treats and Peeps during their Easter celebrations than the non-Orthodox Christians.

Yes, there are benefits to being Orthodox. So while some of you are reading this and wondering why I’m writing about Easter, which just passed several weeks ago, a whole lot of other Christians are looking forward to Easter Sunday to arrive next week.

Easter is a religious holiday for Christians, but it is also a holiday that has become an American tradition, too.

Ray Hanania and family Easter 1957.

It’s timing is great, coming in the Spring, although when I was a child in the 1950s and 1960s, April was a lot warmer then than it is these days. Easter symbolizes a new birth, religiously for the resurrection and “new birth” of Jesus and Christianity, and also as a time when we awaken from our winter slumber.

April is also my birthday month, which explains for most why I am so emotional and fall in love so easily — Aries — having been married three and one-half times.

Literally, people come up to me and they find out I am Arab and just assume that I must be Muslim. Although I am Orthodox Christian (raised Lutheran), I am Muslim by Culture and proud of it, too.

The Easter baskets are spectacular icons of a great holiday, and so are decorating the eggs, which are also symbols of birth and new beginnings. The Orthodox generally color their eggs one color, purple, which is symbolic of the “Passion of Christ.”

And that’s even another reason why Easter is special for me. My mother, who was Orthodox, was born in Bethlehem and was a parishioner of the Church of the Nativity before legally immigrating to America in the 1950s as the bride of my father, who was born in Jerusalem.

When people go off on me on Facebook, yelling and screaming about my refusal to submit to the lies and biases of the mainstream national news media on issues like the national hoax of the “Trump’s Russian collusion,” I have a great response.

I address their extremist liberal hate by pointing out, “Watch it pal. My mother is from Bethlehem. And Jesus is my cousin.”

It comes in handy being related to Jesus; yes it does.

Weeping Icon, Miraculous Lady of Cicero, St. George Church, Cicero, Illinois

Notice how it is impossible to get away from this country’s ugly, vicious politics and racism?

The word “hoax” automatically evokes images of Jussie Smollett lying through his teeth about being attacked by anti-Gay racists.

It’s too easy for Right of Center “Reagan Democrats” like myself who view the lies about Trump’s “Russian Collusion” to accept the same lies they spread about Iraq and Saddam Hussein having “Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

The biased mainstream national news media promoted both lies as sure as they are eager to trash anyone who has strong views about religion.

That’s the only down side of the Easter holidays, of course. We consume a lot of media BS and we consume a lot of sugar, too. Both are very unhealthy for everyone, including for the extremists on the Left and the extremists on the Right, too.

Traditional Easter candies on sale the day after Easter
(and before Orthodox Easter). Photo courtesy of Ray Hanania

So, let me just wish you a Happy (Orthodox) Easter.

I hope you and your family are healthy and enjoy the Spring and Summer.

Don’t allow the political hate that is dividing this country spoil your demeanor or prevent you from enjoying life.

Life is too short to waste, especially on ugly and vicious politics.

(Ray Hanania is an award winning former Chicago City Hall reporter and political columnist. This column was originally published in the Southwest News Newspaper Group in the Des Plaines Valley News, Southwest News-Herald, The Regional News, The Reporter Newspapers. For more information on Ray Hanania's columns visit www.Hanania.com or email him at rghanania@gmail.com.)