ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
Our Judeo-Christian society is returning to work today after four days of doing things we’d rather be doing if not for bills and other assorted obligations. The lucky ones were, anyway.
Easter Monday traditionally celebrates the day that Jesus Christ spent in typical holiday traffic in Jerusalem. The day after he rose from the dead, rolled the stone back, and met up with his boys.
Most years, Mr Christ’s resurrection aligns with school holidays – something that often makes the trip back to reality on Easter Monday much harder as you’ve got stressed parents and their iPad kids in the back kicking the seat because they didn’t get the right Happy Meal toy.
On the first Easter Monday, Mr Christ woke up on his mate Peter’s couch in downtown Jerusalem. He was feeling a bit sore still from being crucified on the previous Friday.
He met up with his other mate John, and they walked back to where Jesus left his car on Thursday night. It was already about 10 am, and the Bible detailed that Jesus let out a soft, long groan before getting in his cream-coloured 1995 Toyota Corolla Seca. The fuel light was on, so he gently head-butted the steering wheel as John banged on the roof to say goodbye.
The drive back to Nazareth was a long one, so before he got on the highway, he had to go put 30 liters of E10 in the tank. Plus a tube of Original flavor Pringles and a 20-pack of Dunhill International Reds.
At the Ampol North Jerusalem counter, he shut his eyes and quietly asked his Dad to make sure there was enough shekels in his Everyday Saver Account and tapped his debit card on the terminal.
It worked, and off Christ went in a billowing cloud of blue smoke.
On the 144 km journey back up north to Nazareth, Jesus lit his cigarettes with the Toyota’s lighter. The ashtray was overflowing, and some of the butts had made their way into the footwells. With a Dunhill in his left hand beside the cracked window and his right down the Pringle tube, he had time to reflect on his wild weekend. His eyes forward with the tube between his legs. He was lost in his own mind – partly because the stereo wasn’t working. It keeps blowing the fuse. He considered taking the tag off the top of a Coke can, cutting it down, and jamming it in the fuse box to make the radio work but didn’t want to risk blowing the line fuse behind the firewall.
That drive back to Nazareth, in the dreadful traffic, is what Easter Monday celebrates.
More to come.
