When I was a Catholic schoolboy back in Chicago, my run-ins with the nuns were a regular occurrence.

Once, I was asked what I was giving up for Lent. My reply?

“Religion”. The nun called my Mom.

Another time I told a nun that my uncle was a renowned Hollywood choreographer who had created dance numbers for many of the big budget Bible-based sand and sandal movie blockbusters of the day. I informed her that my uncle, a man who loved musicals, and who surprisingly had never married, had told me in great confidence that both Charleton Heston and Jeffrey Hunter were, what my uncle called “part of the secret sisterhood”. I asked the nun, quite innocently, if she was part of that “secret sisterhood”, and if she personally knew Charleton Heston and Jeffrey Hunter. Imagine her dismay to have sudden doubts about Hollywood Moses and Hollywood Jesus in one crushing moment.

Imagine my dismay when she gave an “F” to my latest brilliant 4^th grade class essay “ The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: Religious Symbolism in the Spaghetti Western Cinema”. Even then, I knew that humor was easy, getting away with anything with a nun is hard.

If only Sister Rose Helene (or as I called her behind her back “Sister Rose Hell on Wheels”) knew the real childhood Easter tradition I created at home to torment my mother and grandmother. Each Easter morning, I’d rise from bed and stagger slowly downstairs and into the kitchen where my mother and grandmother would be having Hills Bros. coffee and Cream of Wheat before heading over to church after their hour long pre-communion fast.

I’d move slowly across the kitchen, listless and vacant as the dead. Of course, my mother and grandmother were used to this from me on a daily basis, so I really had to crank up my performance on Easter morning. Then, suddenly, I’d fall dead to the linoleum and lay there lifelessly long enough to milk the moment. Then, I’d leap to my feet in a bolt of supreme energy and shout, “Happy Zombie Jesus Day!”

To which my grandmother would say to my mother, “Molly, it’s a shame all your children lived.” And my mother would reply, “The day is still young. We’ll see about that. More coffee?”

It’s those heartwarming and heartfelt holiday traditions that bring a family together!

And one tradition to which I keep returning to even to this day. This morning, I stumbled listlessly downstairs, entered the kitchen, and shouted to Mrs. PT,

“Happy Zombie Jesus Day”. And it was, and it is, and it will be again next year.
So it is written, so it shall be done.

Blogus Ridiculum

PT

Tags: Charleton Heston, Easter, Zombies