Making up for Easters past

As a child, I used to be a faithful believer in religious holidays and observed them with a kind of fervor and dedication that is seldom seen today. Santa and his reindeer certainly wouldn't go hungry at my house on Christmas night; I made sure they had their share of cookies and milk, plus some extra for the elves and Mrs. Claus back at the North Pole. I even took on the Easter Bunny's position by helping my mother deliver pastel colored Easter baskets, filled with chocolates, fruit candies, and stuffed animals, to various houses on early spring Sunday mornings.

Of course, I attended church service on those holidays as well, and even dressed up for the occasion without really knowing why. I simply assumed that my mother didn't want me to look too shabby sitting next to the complacent-looking matron wearing snow-white gloves and the most expensive dress from Macy's new spring collection with carefully colored and curled hair to top it off.

To me, it didn't really matter. Every church service, whether or not it fell on a holiday, was just as boring and mind-numbing as the next. The preacher (most unfortunately) did not become more scintillating or engaging on holidays, and even worse, the service sometimes would run over since a few extra congregation members would decide to perform their musical acts of praise on that special day. During service, I could only impatiently swing my legs on the pew bench and recount the number of pages in the unpaged hymnal, waiting desperately for the preacher to cease his pious ramblings.

When that instrument of God finally decided that he had stood on the pulpit long enough to fully qualify as a devout saint, I'd excitedly head home where to me, the real holiday celebrations occurred. Although Sunday school teachers had drilled into me that relishing in the commercialism of the holiday does not equate to religious piety, I still couldn't help but enjoy the nonreligious aspects of the holiday a bit more than the religious parts. I figured that knowing the Bible background of the holiday and being able to quote a few choice verses more than paid off my religion dues. Little did I understand or care about the actual religious significance of the holiday.

This Easter, I experienced a religious guilt trip that can only be ascribed to my lack of piety from my earlier years. At home you can easily pass off celebrating religious holidays by enjoying large meals with friends and family and thus experiencing that ever so important holiday sensation, but when you're alone at college, holiday celebrations just don't come as easily. You almost have to attend the religious function to even feel like you're observing the holiday. No restaurant or dining hall can ever be as friendly and receptive as your own kitchen table at home, and most people simply assume you're mature enough to not expect an overfilling Easter basket outside your door Sunday morning.

Regrettably, I'm not.

So while shuffling miserably, Easter basket-less outside in the drizzling rain to brunch, I felt a pang of guilt and sadness while watching straight out of the catalogue perfect families skipping merrily to church underneath their (unlike mine) unbroken umbrellas. The sight of men dressed in sharply creased suits and women wearing bright, flowing dresses only served as a reminder of how I had not celebrated the holiday in any way and more significantly, had not attended church that Sunday or for many past Sundays.

Naturally, church attendance does not imply piety or even a good heart, but why do we feel especially compelled to attend church on religious holidays? For many of us, we can sleep in past 2 p.m. most Sunday afternoons, but if it's Easter Sunday, we're sitting straight up on hard wooden pew benches, catching each word that falls from the preacher's mouth (or at least giving that appearance).

There's nothing wrong with attending church on or near a religious holiday, but does solely attending church only during those times fully qualify as observing a religious holiday?

Or is it just superficially lessening the guilt of not practicing what we preach accumulated over the years? Anna Huang is a freshman from Westlake, Ohio. You can reach her at ajh@princeton.edu.