Round at mates on Good Friday there’s a gaggle of hyper active chocolate fueled kids running round the garden uprooting the plants in search of more chocolate to keep them awake into the wee small hours. We never had egg hunts when we were kids. What we did have was a weird thing called a “Passion Play” and in my small five or six year old mind seeing Roman soldiers and a bloke with long hair and a beard carrying a cross walking past the end of the road was evidence that each year Jesus had to come back to life and go through the whole being nailed up each year and then when it was done we could all to the fair down the bottom of the hill and have a try at winning a goldfish that might last a few weeks. I never actually wondered why the location had changed from the biblical lands to a suburb of Oldham. But it was still mesmerizing to see real authentic Roman centurians giving a real authentic sixties hippy a bit of a rough time until a few years back when I chanced upon some pictures dating back to the late sixties.
Jesus visits Bolton! Safer than Palestine…just!
The hippy son of god was wearing a dressing gown, his cross was quite small in fact if they had nailed him up for dramatic effect he would have had to kneel down for it to work!
Best of all if the Roman soldiers were anything to go by when they invaded Britain some 2000 years back the locals would have pissed themselves sidewards at the sight of tubby men wearing old council safety helmets and towels which would I dare say explain why the Italians soon had us whooped!
I am more informed these days and appreciate that again some 2000 years ago someone called Jesus or thereabouts died so that 2000 years later we could all have a real long weekend to the point where you are having trouble remembering what day it actually is. I guess that after Jesus died up on that (full size) cross his Mum Mary decided to clear his room out so that’s exactly what we have been doing today, several large sacks going to the local charity shop soon and when Mary heard that he’d come back from the dead she went round trying to buy all his stuff back so tomorrow we are off car booting! Then its back to work. So thanks Jesus, not sure where the eggs and rabbits fit in though, it all sounds a bit “old religion” to me, spring, rebirth and so on!
(and certain bits of this blog have been removed on the grounds of taste)
bedford bypass 