I've never been a religious person, and so the only holidays I can really keep track of are those that fall on the same day every year, like Christmas. Easter is a vague concept that floats around somewhere in the spring time and can only be pinpointed with a Google search. I had a better grasp of it when I was in high school, but that's because my high school was Catholic, and when I was living in Switzerland, but that's because I got time off for Easter (most of the official Swiss holidays are Christian ones: Easter, the Ascension, and Whit Monday being three examples of Swiss holidays that fall sometime in the first half of the year). Because they impacted my vacation schedule, I kept very close track of them, and because I knew they were national holidays, I also expected and accepted that everything would be closed on those days.
Coming back to the States, where we skew towards non-religious holidays, like Martin Luther King Day or Presidents' Day or the Fourth of July, Easter again became an amorphous floating holiday with no relevance to my schedule, especially since I no longer bother going to stores, for the most part, because online shopping is so much better for people like me (read: lazy people who don't want to put on pants to go buy things).
For some reason, however, today I decided to go to the brick-and-mortar stores at the Stanford Mall to browse around. Malls are modern altars to capitalism and consumerism and all the other -isms that we take so seriously in the New World. People congregate in malls the way they once did in churches. Imagine my surprise, then when I arrived at the mall, and it was closed. Everything was closed. Even Neiman Marcus, the ultimate shrine to secular consumption, was closed. For Easter.
This is the worst of both worlds -- a religious holiday that doesn't give me any extra days off, but which nonetheless closes down all of the stores. Pick a side, America -- if you're going to close down shop for religious holidays, then give me extra time off. If you're not going to observe religious holidays, then make everything else run on a normal schedule.
(On a side note, Jesus, why don't you want me to go shopping? It's good for the economy, helps keep unemployment in check, which helps the poor -- I doubt Jesus would be opposed to a little bit of retail therapy for the greater good.)
2 comments:
Although I AM a "religious" person, I've also wondered about why stores close on Easter. Yesterday I had the same experience at a mall where everything was closed except the Cheesecake Factory. Evidently, people still need their cheesecake on Easter Sunday. Jesus would want you to buy a cardigan from Banana Republic and give it to a widow or orphan.
BTW, I've always been curious about why you aren't a religious person and whether you do have any faith-based beliefs. If you haven't explored the claims of Christianity, I hope some day you do.
@Dave: Nope, I'm a contented atheist. I've got lots of Christian family, went to Catholic high school, have read a lot of the Bible, and while I recognize it's a good choice for some, it's not my thing. I believe that we should try to be good and make things better, but I don't think that it needs to be based on any kind of faith -- for me, it's just that I only have one life to live, so I'd like to try to live it right.
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