My phone warbled to tell me I had a new message in the string I’d been trading with my friend David.

“BTW, what are you doing for Easter?”

Easter?  Seriously?

“Is that a real holiday?” I answered.  “No, I’ve got no plans.

Why would I?  I’m not a churchgoer, so this is just another Sunday to me.    Maybe a little worse.  I grow up in a time when everything was closed on Sundays.  Back then Easter was only a day for church.  And chocolate.  My Mormo-Catholic parents may not have taken us to Mass – except when my mom’s mom was in town, but they bought us the requisite chocolate bunnies and Easter eggs.  Forget the Peeps.  I was a chocolate kid all the way.  No marshmallows, no caramel, no toffee, no mints.  “Candy” equaled “chocolate.”  No exceptions.

I’ve always at heart looked at Easter as a second- or third-tier holiday – like Arbor Day.  I heard about it every year, dyed my eggs, ate my chocolate and watched “Easter Parade” on TV, but that was it.  To be honest, Easter was like a TV show to me.  While a lot of people around me got very involved in celebrating, I didn’t give a hoot about a “holiday” that didn’t merit time off from school or work.  Come on, even Columbus Day is a real day off for some people.

Easter’s always been a weird moving target, too.  This year it’s March 31.  Next year it’ll be April 20.  The year after that, April 5.  Who can keep track?  It’s hard enough to get a handle on Thanksgiving from year to year.  I usually only know Easter is upon us when some news anchor wishes me a happy Good Friday.

Once in the olden days when the Seattle Public Library quick information line was my Google, I decided to find out why Easter’s got such a nomadic tendency.  I came away with five pages of notes on the switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1582 that came about because of Pope Gregory XIII’s horror that in only a few hundred years Easter would fall in summer rather than spring.  (No, I did not ask why that was a problem.  I already had five pages of notes on what I thought was a simple question.)  Thanks to Gregory, Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the first day of spring.  (Yes, that sounds awfully pagan to me, too, but that’s a whole post unto itself.)

The one time I remember Easter reaching full holiday stature was when I spent a spring term in the UK during grad school.  The buzz started week in advance.  “What are you doing for Easter Weekend?”  “Are you going away for Easter Weekend?”  Easter Weekend?  It’s two days.  What’s the big deal?

Little did I know that over there Easter was a four-day mega-weekend.  Good Friday, Saturday (which, sadly, is just Saturday), Easter Sunday and – wait for it – Easter Monday.  Easter Monday?  Can you even fathom it?  Easter had suddenly leap-frogged over Christmas to being the best Holiday of the year.  Think of it:  four days, warm weather and only cheap gifts to buy.  Easter Weekend took on a glorious new meaning.

In no time at all, the rest of the Americans and I had planned a four-day auto tour of Wales.  It was fantastic.  Did we think of Jesus or the Crucifixion or the stone at His tomb?  No, not much.  Did we go to church?  No.  We were bad people.

Not much has changed.  Today David and I are going to brunch then depending on the weather we’ll either go to the Girl with a Pearl Earring exhibit at the de Young or to the Hunky Jesus contest at Dolores Park.

Yes, yes, I’m going to Hell.  Luckily I’ve made a beautiful hand basket for the trip.