Easter in Dublin

Hello -

It is the Tuesday after Easter and I am worn out from eating so many candy-coated mini eggs, large pure chocolate hollow eggs, chocolate bunnies, and truffle eggs. I ate so much that my endorphins turned on me and actually put me in a bad mood - my husband unplugged the phone while I was talking to my parents and I was peeved for the rest of the day. Easter really is mostly about chocolate and a three-day weekend, but here is the version of why Easter is a holiday that I gave my 3-year-old:

Easter is a holiday because it's the day that Jesus went home to be with his dad and watch over everybody. Jesus was a really important teacher, and he died. Everybody was really sad, but a few days later he got up and wasn't dead any more! He went up in the sky to live with his dad again, and everybody was happy about that. That's why there's a party on Easter.

This may be oversimplifying, but that is a whole other discussion.

In her little mind, Christmas wasn't that long ago, which was all about the Baby Jesus, so she quickly fixated on the idea that Jesus used to be a little baby, but then grew up to be a big man who died for a while. Her main concern is the chocolate (on both Christmas and Easter), but at least she isn't 100% ignorant of the historical reasons we have these holidays.

Dublin is a great place to be on Easter (provided it isn't pouring down rain), because everybody leaves for a few days in the countryside. Did you ever see that movie Night of the Comet where a comet turns everybody who sees it to dust and the world is a ghost town? It's kind of like that. Normally, Dublin really bustles and we have problems with traffic, getting reservations in restaurants, long lines in the grocery store, and so on, and I always enjoy a break from that. One big drawback to Dublin at Easter is that you cannot buy alcohol on Good Friday. Liquor stores (they call them off-licenses) are closed, grocery stores won't sell it, restaurants won't sell it. The result is, most Irish people stock up beforehand so that they have something to drink at home. Someone told me that it ends up being the biggest drinking night of the year. If you arrived as a tourist and didn't know this, you'd be completely baffled. You'd be in the middle of one of the cities most famous for boozing the world over, and not allowed to drink.

Things like the non-drinking Good Friday are quintessentially Irish. Other things I would put in the same category are the fact that abortion is illegal here, and divorce has only been legal since 1995. People have their ways of getting around things though. For one, you can do whatever you like in the UK, and you can practically swim there from here.

I am going to resist the urge to cram too much into my first blog entry. Next time I log on, I'll talk about being pregnant and other fascinating topics.........