The Lost Easter

This morning, I attended church at inSpirit Church instead of my parents' church. Before going to Spain, I went to inSpirit whenever I didn't have a commitment to play in another church. Pastor Randy is on vacation, which means that they had a guest pastor instead. He started the service in the usual way, with greetings and a blessing, and somewhere near the end, he mentioned that it was Ascension Day.

Wait. Ascension Day? Did we have Easter? When was Easter?
-Yeah, Easter was back in April. Where were you?
Um....yeah......where was I.....

As I sat there trying to think of why I had no memory of Easter, it slowly came back to me. I remember it was raining, suuuuper hard, and because I had been coughing and sneezing the last couple of days, my host mamá begged me not to leave the house. All of these circumstances  put me in my bed on Easter morning, instead of walking to church. I tried to tell her that I would just walk to the bus station and catch the van up to the church, but she insisted that I stay in bed because she knew what was better for me. I didn't have the physical or mental strength to argue with her, so I stayed in bed.
Bit of background: My host family is non-religious. Pau, Carol's 9-year-old son, attends a Catholic school, but I think it's more because Carol wanted him to have a good private education as some of the state-run schools don't provide an education that adequately prepares students to succeed in university prep courses. The private schools do a much better job. Basically, the same story as some of America's public schools.
Anyway, my host family doesn't celebrate religious holidays, which meant that for me, Easter became just any other Sunday, which really meant it was like any other Saturday. Consuelo cooked a regular old meal, we sat in front of the tv, and then I went back to my room after a little while to read or watch tv online or something. I don't remember. Everyone else was traveling around on Spring Break, and I stayed in during the whole rest of the day. Easter 2011 passed into history as the Easter that I didn't celebrate with a single other soul.

Normally, my family celebrates Easter by going to church, which always involves something extra Easter-y: songs, a drama, lilies at the front, etc. Then we would usually go to my grandma's house with other family members and we would have a huge meal and tons of candy. When I (and most of my cousins) were younger, Grandma would always prepare little baskets of candy and jellybeans for us to take home. This was always my favorite because I loooooooove candy. Now she just pours the chocolates into my outstretched hands straight from the bag because I'm too old for the little baskets. :)
I guess this is my point: Do I really need all the family-related activities to remember Easter? Did I forget this year's Easter because I didn't go to church or do typically Easter-y things? Or was it kind of a fluke: not going to church, being in Spain, living with a family that doesn't celebrate Easter, no other Americans around, and it all felt like a Saturday - all of these circumstances combined to make me forget it? I kind of hope that this is the reason, because the first reason makes me look kind of bad. :)

It's not as if I forgot the significance of Easter. It's one of my favorite holidays because of all the feeling that is attached to it - hope, renewal, rebirth, life, etc. Which is why it made it extra hard to be away from home during Easter. All of the things that I normally associate with Easter meant nothing to my host family. I think the closest thing I can compare it with is this: They don't celebrate Christian holidays in the same way that my family doesn't celebrate Jewish holidays. It's not an attempt to thumb their noses at God, it's just different. Anyway, seeing all the Facebook statuses about Easter made me feel a little bit closer, but even farther away at the same time.

So back to church this morning. When was Easter, and where was I? Easter was April 24, and I was in Spain. It was an Easter unlike any I had ever celebrated, and not in a good way, but it helped me learn something:

Holidays have to have a personal significance. If the meaning of the holiday is wrapped up in the way that you celebrate it, you'll forget the holiday every year.