Back After The Easter Break!

Now I don't celebrate Easter for what it is, and since I can be very shallow and materialistic, I jumped on the chance to take a break from everything during these Easter holidays.

I am Italian and I remember the way we used to celebrate Easter at home. My mother would cook a huge meal, we would all gather around the kitchen table (my mother, father, two sisters, brother and I) and my father would bless us with a palm branch dipped in holy water. He would always focus more on those who had been the naughtiest. When I was younger, my brother would get half the bottle of holy water thrown at him. As I got older, I somehow managed to snatch his role. It was all very tongue in cheek, my father was never that serious about Italian traditions, but being from another generation he felt kind of obliged to respect them. He would just pay homage in his very own little way, and 90 per cent of the times it wasn't the most conventional of ways.

For me, it was all about getting to the Easter egg. When I was a child there was nothing more exciting than opening a Kinder Easter egg to see what surprise would come out of it. Not to mention the chocolate, it was just amazing and still gets me half wet these days.

This year's Kinder Easter egg

It wasn't just something I would do as a little boy. I kept on getting Easter eggs up until a few years ago, then I moved out and I started buying them for myself or my boyfriend buys them for me. I'm not giving up on my Kinder chocolate anytime soon.

Growing older means that a lot of the festivities seem to lose their magic, no matter how hard we try to hold on to the memories of how it was. Although now I am writing this down while listening to Danny Elfman's "The Grand Finale" from the "Edward Scissorhands OST" and I sort of managed to feel exactly the way I used to feel when I'd be standing around the kitchen table with my family, waiting for my dad to bless us and hoping the whole thing would be over soon so that we could get to our Easter eggs.

This year I celebrated Easter with my boyfriend. It was very different from the way it used to be, but just as enjoyable. We went to the beach, spent time sitting on the rocks in front of the sea, just talking, reminiscing and enjoying each other's company. It was a beautiful day, despite the cloudy weather and the cutting wind (yes, in Spain, and yes, in late April).

Sitges, its church and bad weather

Mind you, we also went clubbing, spent the whole night dancing and went to bed at 8AM. I'm pretty sure Jesus felt like doing the same when he came back to life.