Paschal the Lamb and Trevor the Dessert

Religious holidays were invented in 1793 to provide people with a plausible excuse to visit their parents.  Easter was officially promulgated a few years later after intense lobbying from the Catholic church's chocolate marketing division.  Since that time the holiday has become increasingly popular, particularly among Christians.

In keeping with tradition and not at all because I wanted a free meal I undertook the journey to the Blue Mountains and the bosom of my family which is located there along with the rest of my family's anatomy.  For a change and somewhat to my surprise I travelled by train.  There has been a rail link between my home and the Blue Mountains for over fifty years but in my experience the presence of actual trains on it is a somewhat rare occurrence.  Somewhat tentatively I settled down into a long metal box and waited to see if it would take me where I wanted to go.

I was visiting my parents to help them to eat Paschal the Lamb.  I must confess I found the idea of giving a pet name to something you're about to eat slightly creepy but my mother informed me I had misread the invitation and I was being invited to eat a Paschal lamb.  Whatever mum, if you serve up a dessert called Trevor I am out of there.  Just as soon as I've finished Trevor of course.

Much to my relief a little research confirmed that the Paschal lamb is indeed a special sort of lamb eaten at Easter.  It is special because it is eaten at Easter and thus gets its own name unlike the anonymous cutlets I had for dinner last night.  The Paschal lamb represents the lamb of God which in turn represents Christ in his role as a sacrifice for the sins of humanity.  To show our gratitude we eat it.  Its no wonder the Romans thought Christians were cannibals.

Actually the whole Paschal lamb tradition is derived from a much older Jewish tradition which should surprise nobody as the whole of Christianity is derived from a much older Jewish tradition called Judaism.  At Passover a lamb was sacrificed, offerings were made and everybody sat down to eat.  Not surprisingly lamb featured prominently on the menu.  Apparently the sacrifice doesn't happen much anymore.  An attempt was made to revive it but ran into difficulty from PETS (People for the Ethical Treatment of Sacrifices).  It has to be admitted that a clear headed reading of the ritual makes it sound less like a sacrifice and more like an autopsy where the subject starts off alive.  Personally I think God would be just as happy if we shot the thing in the head or ran it down with our car as long as we gave appropriate thanks for our keen aim or lousy driving.

Still I find it difficult to be too critical of a religion that insists on sacrificing delicious things.  What if God had demanded the sacrifice of a raffia basket?  How the hell would we have eaten that?  And lets not even get into what the Aztecs were sacrificing.  Then the sacrificial meal really would have had a name and if the subject was a family member things would have been awkward to say the least.  The Aztecs knew all about chocolate so we could still have had Easter but I doubt if the chocolate treats would have been shaped like eggs and they certainly wouldn't have been delivered by something as cute and harmless as a bunny.  I suspect with the Aztecs in charge children would be cowering in their homes fearing a visit from the
Easter jaguar.  And if Christ did rise on the third day his first comment would have been, "Right, where did those bastards put my heart?"