Hail Thee Festival Day: Atheist Easter nostalgia for high church aesthetics

When I was growing up, my life revolved around singing in an Episcopal (Anglican) church choir. My entire life was organised around the church year, with the major flurries of choir activity happening around Xmas and Easter. Not only was I Head Chorister, but I made it a point to have perfect attendance at all services, rehearsals, and associated musical events, such as singing at weddings, funerals, memorial services, and professional recordings made by the choir, as well as playing in the handbell choir, and even serving as an acolyte on occasion when there was a need.

Although I am an atheist (not a live-&-let-live atheist, but a militant New Atheist in the vein of the four horsemen), I have a deep aesthetic attachment to the music and the rituals of the Anglican church, particularly the ornate architecture, art, vestments, archaic language, and bells and smells of the high church.

Choir of King's College

As a nonbeliever, religion is about aesthetics and ritual for me. When I see photos of modern megachurches that have stark, ugly buildings, either no vestments or plain ones, big screens, execrable music, contemporary language, I cannot see the point for the attendees. I realise for the pastors it is about the money, but the flock who are being fleeced do not care that they are in an aesthetic wasteland.

For believers, worship is not about aesthetics. This is a growing problem. People used to go to church as part of community life. The fact that they did not really believe was largely irrelevant. Several of the rectors at the church in which I grew up were atheists. In the Episcopal church, lack of belief is no impediment to being a priest. If that surprises you, think of all the duties of a priest. Faith affects none of them, least of all the weekly writing of a sermon. Today, church attendance is no longer a regular part of community life so the only people who attend regularly are actual believers, an increasingly smaller percentage of the population, which is in itself a good thing but disastrous for church finances. Churches are closing, consolidating, and simplifying their services to cater to less-educated attendees, as well as attendees who do not speak English well, and they are operating on far smaller budgets. The church I grew up in no longer has a professional, paid choir. There is no budget to hire brass for Easter, no more handbell choir, no more full-time choirmaster and church organist position. Attendance is about ¼ of what it was. And the new rectors do not give a shit about high church aesthetics; they are boring, modern, dull, tasteless philistines.

Today is Good Friday, normally a day of long, somber services, and intense rehearsals to prepare for Easter, the most festive service of the liturgical year. I miss the music, the scent of the incense, the Easter lilies lining every surface in the chancel, the ornately-decorated historic vestments taken out of storage for the occasion, and especially the trumpets and other brass hired to perform with us for the festal services ringing out brightly in the nave. I really loved the trumpets because they were so jubilant. I always hid Easter candy in my pockets and ate waaaay too much that day.

In pre-COVID times, I tried to seek out a high church service to attend at Xmas and Easter but they have gone extinct. We need an Aesthetic Revival!

This Easter, I will listen to every Anglican Easter hymn playlist I can find on Spotify, eat Easter candy, and wallow in nostalgia for a time when people actually dressed up and wore hats.

One last point: I just read this quote about Easter 2021 from an Episcopal rector and it really resonated. It does feel like we have collectively endured a year-long Lent, and the pandemic has indeed highlighted how much is broken in our society. May 2021 be the year of fixing racial and economic injustices, and, above all, building a stellar public education system to prevent them recurring.

“I knew things were broken, but I had no idea how broken. I knew race relations were strained, but I had no idea how strained. I knew there was sickness and disease and that people died, but it’s been humbling to see a nation like ours and others around the world brought to their knees. It feels like we’ve been in a yearlong Lent.”

Valentine's Day is the kick in the arse some relationships need

It's hip to hate on V-Day.  All the cool couples scorn it.  It's passé, a cheesy Hallmark holiday to sell overpriced roses and waxy chocolate, an obligatory sex day even if it falls on a work night and your back hurts from shovelling all that snow.  Besides, if you need a greeting card company to remind you to express affection to your partner, your relationship has problems ain't no annual blow job gonna fix.

Take note, guys: Most women would rather have a dozen orgasms than a dozen roses.

All men hate Valentine's Day.  At least, I have yet to meet one who doesn't.  My ex refused to even acknowledge its existence.  Despite having had two long-term relationships in my adult life, the only Valentine's Day gift I've ever received was from a high school boyfriend who gave me chocolate-covered strawberries.  Strawberries are not exactly in season in Chicago in February, so they probably tasted like Styrofoam but, at 16, I thought it was pretty sweet a boy had gone to Godiva to get me something.  (30 years later, he now hates V-Day, too.)

"Sex tonight?  Aw, sorry, honey, I can't.
I have to clip my toenails & do my taxes."

Guys give the same reason for rejecting the holiday:  Forced displays of affection are meaningless.  I agree.  For the couple getting each other generic gifts, like the cliché of the executive who has his secretary order a dozen roses for his wife every year, it is meaningless.  But, even if you choose not to celebrate it, there is a lesson couples can take from V-Day, if you apply a little perspective to the holiday.  I first wrote a defence of Valentine's Day 14 years ago, the gist of which was:  No, you cannot feel emotions on command, nor should you.  Yes, you and your partner should have sexy romantic fun time and give each other random gifts throughout the year.  But life gets in the way.  Couples with the best of intentions to make time for each other, to keep the romance alive, to have other than perfunctory weekly sex, don't.  Responsibilities, from work to kids to housework, family, friends, hobbies, binge-watching Netflix, sleeping, take priority.  You may even feel guilty taking time for yourselves as a couple—spending money on dinner out or a babysitter, or staying up late to fuck.  Valentine's Day isn’t going to repair a broken relationship.  It's not going to reawaken sexual desire or feelings of warmth and affection, but if they're there, just pushed onto a backburner, it is an excuse to make your relationship a priority, guilt-free.  You can go out for dinner and agree not to talk about the kids or the mildew problem in the basement, hold hands and flirt like when you were dating, schedule a hot tub and massage and then go home and fuck without worrying about being tired in the morning.

This unisex card has the perfect message.

In that way, it's not so much forcing you to feel emotions based on the calendar as providing an excuse to express ones that are already there.  If the day itself doesn't work for you — maybe a kid is sick or one of you has a major work deadline or it's just too cheesy — use it as a reminder to schedule that time at the first opportunity.  If you find you don't want to, that's a red flag.  You don't have to celebrate or acknowledge V-Day at all but if the thought of having any kind of a date night leaves you cold, the relationship may be dead and you just didn't notice.  It may be possible to resuscitate it or it may be time to move on.  Either way, don't hit snooze and ignore the wake-up call.

Any holiday can be made political if you try hard enough.

Shy about expressing your desires?
Make some of these.

I used to write a sex advice column in the persona of a dominatrix.  For a completely unserious lark, the column received a lot of serious questions.  By far the most common one was "I'd like to try <insert sexual activity> but I'm afraid to ask my partner."  V-Day, or its personalised substitute, if you prefer to use your birthday, anniversary, Arbor Day, etc., provides an excuse to kick a routine sex life up a notch.  If you don't feel comfortable straight-up asking for what you want, you can pen it as a fantasy, draw a picture, make coupons, or, if all else fails, there's always alcohol and handcuffs.

(That last was a joke – not suggesting anything non-consensual.)

If you agree as a couple to ignore Valentine's Day, that's your prerogative.  But in my experience it's usually the guy who wants to disregard it and the woman goes along because she has no counterargument and she wants to seem cool and not sappy or needy.  Ladies, here's your response.  Gentlemen, bear in mind that this is the one holiday that is guaranteed to get you laid.  How can you not dig that?

If you're not sore for the next few days, you need to 'celebrate the holiday' again.

O Holy Nightmare

Xmas Eve

Just as I get home from feeding the horses at my local barn, Suz rings to tell me that "Silas isn't right" and she has called the vet. It's the call every horse owner dreads, with the c-word hovering, menacing but left unsaid.

But at first it didn't sound like colic.  He was cold to the touch, shivering, temp 98F.  There was freezing rain but he was dry under his spiffy new waterproof sheet and his winter coat is thick and fuzzy.  In fact, he's only had a sheet for about a month and a half.  He survived his first three winters with no blanket and never a sign of minding the cold.  My first thought was that he had sweated under the unaccustomed sheet and gotten chilled from that but they quickly warmed him up, he stopped shivering, his temp returned to normal, but his eye was dull and he wouldn't eat.  He wasn't kicking his belly or showing other signs of colic though, and he was pooping.  [Sorry non-horse people, but the presence or absence of poop is the difference between life and death for horses, so we're obsessed by it in a way that we understand seems bizarre to you.]

But the freezing rain delayed the vet's arrival and by the time Dr. C. arrived Silas was wanting to roll and the barn slaves were walking him around the indoor.  Suz gave him oral banamine for pain relief.  He was liking the attention but still obviously not his normal cheeky self.  Vet gave buscopan and butorponal for pain relief.  He heard gut sounds in all four quadrants [horses fart a lot – sorry again, non-horse people] but he did detect what he thought was a slight impaction in the right colon.  He was severely dehydrated so he started an IV and also tubed him.  Silas was refluxing badly – he got 9 litres of fluid.  The more he examined him, the more serious it appeared, and it was decided that he needed to go to hospital, at the very least for the IV and to administer pain meds since obviously the oral banamine was getting nowhere.

Luckily, Suz was both able and willing to trailer him the hour and a half to the nearest hospital.  Did I mention Xmas Eve is also her birthday?  I was beside myself and helpless being both broke and far away; I can never repay her dedication and kindness.  Her response was simply that she knows I'd do the same for her, which is true.  And she and everyone else at her barn adore Silas and would do anything for him, never mind me.  When I lamented her birthday and Xmas Eve being ruined, she replied that she was just happy she caught it in time to help him, that she could have found him dead or beyond help, as has happened in the past.

But Suz's devotion to me and my baby boy was not shared by the hospital.  They would not admit him without a credit card that would hold $10K, which is the typical amount for colic treatment, and all three of my cards are maxed out.  It's the first time in my life that has happened and I have had no access to credit for an emergency such as this.  To make matters worse, I have always been diligent about insuring Silas since before he was first shipped to me as a weanling.   But I just had to let his insurance lapse because I could not afford the premium.  This makes me sick because insurance would have covered all of this staggering expense that is now going to be piled on top of my existing debt.

So what did I do?  I called one credit card, lied about my income, and got a $2500 increase on my credit limit.  A start, but not enough.  Back when my dog was sick, I had used a special credit card just for vet bills.  But he died in 2011 and it had since been deactivated for lack of use.  I had to reapply for it, again lying about my income, and got a $7K limit.  That gave me at total of $9.5K.  Not quite the $10K minimum they wanted, but they took it, thank fuck.

It was nearly 4pm before he arrived and was examined and I got some news.  I have never been so scared in my entire life.  And this was Xmas Eve, my favourite holiday.  Looking back, I don't know how I got through the day.

Sometimes just the bumpy trailer ride alone can get a colicky horse to poop but no such luck.  Vet at hospital at least sounded cool and competent over the phone.  She said he had a huge impaction, not small like regular vet had opined, and his small intestines were extremely distended and severely displaced.  They tubed unbelievable amounts of foul reflux.  She said she had never smelled such an odor, quipping that "Silas was making silage."  It had clearly been brewing for awhile, but he'd eaten his dinner with his usual gusto the previous evening, kicking his dish and demanding it be filled as per his usual entitled insistent attitude.  Friesians have a reputation for being so stoic that by the time they refuse food and actually show clinical symptoms of illness, they are practically dead.

They loaded him up with oil, salt water, and drugs for pain and to relax the gut and encourage motility and said they'd ring me Xmas morning unless there was a change for the worst:  "No news is good news."

I spent a literally entirely sleepless Xmas Eve night with the phone on my pillow, willing it not to ring, and trying not to imagine worst-case scenarios.  For the non-horse people reading this, the dread is that the intestines will twist, necessitating surgery to remove the necrotic section.  Friesians do not do well with anaesthesia, and the prognosis for colic cases needing surgery is extremely poor.  Most who go into surgery do not wake up.

Xmas Day

Vet reported that he was much brighter in the morning – he'd pooped twice and pulled out his IV, and was making it very clear that he was NOT happy the other horses were getting fed and he wasn't.  But there wasn't much change internally – impaction not cleared, still bloated, and small intestines still horribly displaced.  He wasn't coming home but vet was optimistic that he just needed more time and that surgery could still be avoided.  They'd given him lots of mineral oil which she hoped to see streaming disgustingly down his legs by the next morning.  I breathed, just a little bit, but still got no sleep Xmas night.

Boxing Day (or St. Stephen's Day, as you prefer)

No oil.  I had hoped for better news this morning but exam (I'll spare non horse people the details of how this is done) showed that the small intestines were still displaced and blockage must not be clear due to the oil's non-appearance.  They were giving him hot mashes and horse tea (water with a handful of sweet feed mixed in), which he was eagerly sucking down.  We decided that turning him out for awhile might shake things back into place.  (Also, feeling better and not being used to confinement, he was climbing the walls in the stall.)  There was a risk he could roll and create the dreaded torsion that would necessitate surgery, but, at this stage, vet and I agreed that the likelihood movement and even rolling would help outweighed the risk it could hurt.  Her hypothesis is that the intestine is resting on a section of colon that is still impacted and once it clears it will fall back into place.  If not, well, the other possible explanations are all ominous.  She said she'd update me later.

Unfortunately, per the evening update, he didn't move around much in turn-out – lazy or just exhausted from the ordeal.  So, the plan is to keep giving him tea and mash overnight and hope to see that oil by morning.  At this point, I am so tired I can hardly see straight.  I desperately wish I could see him but can't afford to drive all that way and have nowhere to stay if I could.

And he won't be coming home tomorrow even if impaction is cleared and intestines are back to normal because the next step is challenging with hay to see if he colics again or digests it with good motility.  So, he won't be released until at least Wednesday at this point.  And Suz is out of town for a week's much-deserved holiday so getting him home is a problem.  Luckily, she has a boarder who is willing to pick him up after work any night this week.  I HATE to be in anyone's debt, but I have no choice here.

I hoped he'd be out of the woods by now, and surgery would be definitively ruled out.  But I have another anxious night ahead.  I wish I could just be with him, even if there is nothing I could do to make him better.  I just want to touch him and talk to him and tell him I love him a hundred times a minute.