In my childhood, Easter time was a season of colours, starting with black on Ash Wednesday. The mysterious soot marks we all sported on our foreheads struck me as hilarious and solemn at the same time. Hilarious - and excitingly anarchic - because, for once in the orderly adult world, smudges weren't hastily cleaned away. Solemn because the priest's "ashes to ashes" pronouncement was the first time anyone had even hinted that I would die some day.
I sensed immense forces were at work. And so they were.After that monochrome beginning, Lent, like the earth in springtime, exploded in colours. The yellow of daffodils and of he marshmallow chicks my sisters and I gobbled every Sunday as our reward for being quiet during Mass. The purple of crocuses and the priest's Lenten vestments. The green of the fronds we waved around the church on Palm Sunday. The pastels - peach, pistachio, lavender - of the dresses my mother bought herself and us girls to wear on Easter Sunday. The brownish-red of Christ's wounds as depicted in our church's lurid plaster representation of the 12th Station of the Cross.
Sights and sensations
The simple faith and complex hues of my childhood Easters faded over the years - until I discovered travel. By exposing me to sights and sensations I'd otherwise never experience, Easter trips abroad helped me to rethink and reconnect with Easter, which is at once the saddest and most joyous period in the Christian calendar.
The process began when I first witnessed the spectacle of Spain's Holy Week processions. I had never seen the like before: hooded figures, reminiscent of Ku Klux Klansmen, walking barefoot, dragging chains or carrying candles, sometimes accompanied by horns and a persistent, downbeat drum, at other times passing by in silence; "floats" depicting weeping virgins, or Christ on the cross. At first I thought the former were all representations of Mary, but a Spanish friend explained that every region has its own virgin, and locals tend to be very fond of their own and dismissive of others.
The first procession I saw, in Granada, made me cry. Forget bunnies and eggs, these people were staring into the gory maw of the Passion. Using the prosaic media of wood, paint and, in the case of the virgins, a semi-precious tear or two, the statues' facial expressions conveyed pain, faith and compassion all at once. I hadn't felt so moved and awed since I was eight when, impressed by a recent viewing of The Song of Bernadette and a certain effect of the sun breaking through clouds, I was sure that a heavenly visitation was imminent.
Then we moved on to Seville, the epicentre of Spain's Holy Week magic and morbidity, where I saw six more processions, each more spectacular than the next. At night I dreamed of self-flagellating penitents and cannibalistic demons out of Goya's "black paintings". After days of heraldic trumpets and death-knell drums, we decided to take a break by visiting a flamenco bar for an hour or two of guitars and singing. But it seemed that in Seville there was no escape from Holy Week: when the clock struck midnight, the lights were turned off, except for those illuminating a jewel-encrusted statue of a gypsy virgin, and a musician wailed homage to the local saint.
Jubilant celebration
Spain reminded me of dark mysteries of the Passion, but it was a trip to Mexico that rekindled my appreciation of Easter as a jubilant celebration of life. I had almost forgotten the season that year, caught up as I was in the spell of sun, cervezas and snorkelling off the tiny island of Cozumel. It was the perfect break from a miserably stressful job, and I spent most of my days underwater, delighting in the myriad permutations of fish and the fact that I was floating in the azure vastness of the Caribbean Ocean, not toiling in the fluorescent-lit confines of my office.
When I finally spent a day exploring above the waterline, I wandered by a church and blundered into a Holy Saturday fiesta in full swing. The square was filled with lambs that had been dyed powder pink and baby blue, and, not to be outdone, little girls delighted their adoring families by twirling in flouncy polyester dresses, each with a skirt circumference of at least three feet. It was a scene of pure joy.
Abandoning the beach for the jungle, on Easter Sunday we drove to Coba, a minuscule village in the Yucatan Peninsula with about a dozen huts, two adobe restaurants, amazing archaeological ruins and, rather surreally, a Club Med hotel complete with swimming pool and faux Mayan artefacts. We settled in for dinner on the porch of one of the restaurants, which was directly across from a tiny, straw-roofed church. As we ate, a full moon rose and the sound of prayers and hymns wafted out of the service.
Jungle moon
Captivated by the scene and the singing, we lingered over coffee so we could catch a glimpse of the worshippers. But though we watched and waited long enough to annoy our laid-back waiter, the service continued long into the night, and we finally gave up and left. The jungle moon had risen higher in the sky, the congregation was still singing and praying, the spell was never broken. Although Christianity came harshly to that part of the world, at that moment it seemed an unquestionably good thing.
I've spent my two other Easters abroad more conventionally, pulling out whatever was smartest or least wrinkled from my suitcase and attending mass myself. Both services were a far cry from what I was used to: humid warmth and the honeyed drawl of the celebrant at St Ann's Church in New Orleans; soaring architecture and oppressive crowds in Paris's Notre Dame. But at both services, I was struck by a feeling I don't always have in my local parish: a sense of belonging, the feeling that I have a home of sorts wherever I go, as long as there's a church.
Despite my differences with ecclesiastical authorities, wherever I am, the church at Easter time remains a touchstone. And the story of Christ's passion and resurrection, whether viewed as a redemptive fact or an uplifting myth, remains a source of wonder.