Took a Peaceful Holiday
I’ve been absent over Easter, that’s pretty much been intentional on my part. Not just because I like to do my own ceremonies in private, but also because this is not a holiday I enjoy and certainly not a holiday I feel comfortable sticking my head over the trenches for.
Like many religious holidays, this is one where you can guarantee that the media is going to stick some microphones in front of a priest/vicar/bishop/other holy bloke and then repeat/reprint his words for the entire nation
The holy words of holy blokes are generally pretty hateful. The organised churches of this country (and the vast majority of the world) have made no secret of the fact they’d rather I drop dead tomorrow and never miss a chance to launch another attack against us whenever more publicity comes their way. Whatever messages apply to whatever holidays, the one that is repeated on all of them is that their god loathes GBLT people.
After years of hateful holy rhetoric that has only intensified as we fight for legal equality, I’m running on empty. Faced with a holiday of trying to play dodge-the-Christian on TV, the internet and more I decided to opt out of all of them as much as I am able and had a few days of silence, not answering the phone and not speaking to people. I particularly clung to Saturday where I went all day seeing and speaking to only GBLT people - I had knots untense in my muscles I never even knew I had.
The problem I’ve found is, especially in the people around me and in my family, that Easter is one of those holidays where nominal Christians suddenly remember Christianity and put on 8 new layers of temporary religious gestures - and end up saying, supporting and doing shit that offends, angers, worries or scares me.
And, the sad thing is, overt displays of Abrahamic religions already worry and frighten me; I often regard them the same way I would bright colourful markings on a snake or hornet - be warned, here lies something that wants to fuck you up most royally. It’s become a reflexive flinch and doesn’t make for a quiet or easy time of life when there are religious holidays about and someone’s dug Lord Carey from the pit, AGAIN. C’mon isn’t there a limit to how many times you can raise the same zombie? Someone check the Monster Manual.
So, I stayed in, I battened down the hatches and I relaxxxxxxxxxxxxxed. It reminds me how many months it’s been since I last had peace, I may have to do this more often.