because this one has started out a bit wonky. On the plus side, the trees all along our street bloomed just in time for Easter. They are gorgeous. I love flowering trees.

On the other hand, after a beautiful, spring-like Good Friday and Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday dawned chilly and grey. Today, Easter Monday, it actually snowed. I live in the south, mind you. Even in January we hardly ever get snow.

Sad weather notwithstanding, we had a nice and memorable Easter Sunday, but somewhat more hectic than my Easter Sundays of years past. We had people over for Easter dinner, so I got up early to start cooking, and spent much of the day either cooking or entertaining, except of course for the time spent at Mass (the non-Catholic friend we invited to dinner also came to Mass with us, which was nice). What with the unusually complicated musical repertoire, Mass was rather hectic as well. It’s quite an adventure trying to hold together a little band of mostly-inexperienced singers, doing a solid 25 minutes or so worth of music that we’ve barely had a chance to practice. For the honor of our Risen Lord, however, we gave it everything we had. And then, after 15-plus hours of cooking, singing and entertaining, I finally dozed off on the couch sometime after midnight.

Anyway, it was definitely a nice day, but not the sort of contemplative Easter that had become my norm over the last few years. I usually try to have some “reflection time” on Easter, as well as calling family, but I never got around to those things.

This morning (even colder and more dismal than yesterday) I woke up with some sort of cold or flu. It doesn’t seem very serious, but enough so that cleaning up from the day before had to be done in short increments, interspersed with spells of lying down. Afterwards I felt so dreary that it didn’t seem like a great time for returning to my postponed “personal” Easter traditions. I still haven’t done my favorite Easter readings or listened to my favorite Easter hymns. It was also an old custom of mine to read straight through one of the Gospels (usually Matthew) at Easter. I think it’s nice to do that once in awhile, just to get the whole story in one sitting. As familiar as the words are, I invariably find a passage or two jumping out at me as if they were totally new. With a text like that, different meanings become apparent to you at different stages in your life. No matter how many times I reread it, I can never predict what’s going to hit me the next time.

But the larger point is that this year I’ve done none of those things, which is why it’s good that Catholic Easter is long enough that the opportunity is not really missed. And I’m sure we’ll get some sunny, springy Easter days before long. Isn’t it a lovely thing to have a whole season of Paschaltide, every day of which is a day of rejoicing? We had no such thing in my Mormon youth, so it always seems like a wonderful luxury to me, and after trudging through Lent the season really feels celebratory, if only because you don’t have to fast anymore! It gives me that same wonderful feeling of excitement and freedom that I used to get as a kid when school got out for the summer. Why do so many people associate Catholicism with a kind of joyless, legalistic drudgery? The truth is, we have it great. We’re allowed to dance, to eat both cows and pigs, to smoke and to drink alcohol, PLUS you never have to lose that magical feeling that comes with the advent of an entire season of joyfulness.