Easter and a Visit to the Barber's!

I was originally going to do a post about my three-monthly visit a couple of days ago to my barber’s who’s always talking dirty and telling me sick jokes (and who on this occasion nicked me just below the ear!), but then I thought that as Easter had caught up with me, it being Good Friday today, it would be more in keeping with the moment if I said something about the paschal season, though what exactly I’m not sure. Hey, that was an awfully long sentence!

I say it's Good Friday today but in literally a couple of minutes we lurch into Shopping Saturday and it's farewell Good Friday! So I've just made it. But now I've got to get my thoughts together and say something awesomely profound and thought-provoking about this specific moment in the year, second only to Christmas in this part of the world but superior to Christmas in other parts. It's really six of one and half-a-dozen of the other because if Jesus had not been born (Christmas) Christianity might never have come into existence. On the other hand, if Jesus had not become the Christ and then risen after being crucified, it could have had the same result again. So it's hard to decide which of the two is more important and perhaps there's no point in even trying to do so. Both conditions are indispensable for the outcome that we want and for Christianity to exist. 

My Barber

Have you ever wondered why the day on which our Lord was vilely abused, lashed, tortured, and cruelly put to death by crucifixion is called Good Friday? No, not the ‘Friday’ part, clever cloggs, the ‘Good’ part. I mean, what’s good about all that? Well, there are a couple of possible explanations and they're all available on the Internet, as is everything else, so don't expect me to waste valuable virtual paper and real time setting them out here. Just take a virtual trip to the virtual place that provides information on this... virtually! And remember: if it ain't virtual, it ain't real!


I could say that I went for a haircut so as to smarten up for Easter, and I'm half tempted to say that, but the truth of the matter is that my head of hair, though slightly thinner at the top than it was a few years ago, was taking over my head and face and I was beginning to look a bit like John the Baptist without the beard and moustache. At least I assume he had a beard and tache because we're led to believe they all had that in those distant days, especially the prophets (though not the women, I should add!), as it gave them an air of gravitas and wisdom and was also all the rage at the time. Apart from a few fugitives from the 1960s, who think that a long untidy mop of hair is still in fashion, most blokes nowadays are either purposely bald or have a number one haircut, which is the next best thing to a bald bonce! Of course one day they will all end up bald or as good as and won't have the option they have now, but it seems we never miss it till we've lost it.

But coming back to the Easter theme, Holy Week doesn't seem to deter killers and terrorists from going about their usual business of... well... killing and terrorising! If one watches the news bulletins, it's business as usual all over the world and general all-round beastliness is not suspended even in nominally Christian nations. The business of aggression and assault is too important to break off, even for a day or two. There are too many people to kill and terrorise to let a backlog build up. Besides, it could set a bad precedent for the future and end up interfering with the wicked ways of evil men, a breed that abounds in the world and always has. 

Easter Party for Druggies

Well, there you have it, loyal readers, just a few of my random ramblings, a new angle on Easter and a quick word on my haircut and on my delightful toilet-mouthed sex-fiend of a barber! How are they related, you may ask, and, though I confess it is a tenuous link, a link it is nonetheless and it is that of coinciding chronologically. Haircut Wednesday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday. It all ties in. And if you think this all a little odd, just feast your eyes on the rocambolesque scene in the picture here which would have done Alice proud as she wandered around her Wonderland! It's all going on here and it rather resembles the unchecked lunatic content of some sick sod's sleep-induced imaginings!


As I drove home from the barber's sporting a brand new haircut, I thought long and hard about the Easter story in the context of the state of the world today and it was then that the seeds of a blog post began to germinate in my sick mind. The state of the world was a subject that was bottomless and fathomless, but my visit to the barber was not. Christ's suffering and sacrifice were clear enough and his overriding message was clear too. My silly haircut was not so easy to understand and wasn't even worth contemplating. When I got home and looked in the mirror, it looked even sillier and I had no wig in the house to cover up my embarrassment. If long hair was good enough for Jesus, why was it not for me? Can you imagine the Messiah with short back and sides? Had he worn his hair short, as short as I wore it then, the course of Christianity might have been very different. Indeed, Christianity might never have taken hold! And that is just too awesome to contemplate!! 


I look forward to Sunday morning when Christ the Lord is resurrected, though it is painful to think he will be put through all of it again just a week later for the benefit of Orthodox Christians, a sort of ultimate double whammy! If I needed to visit the barber's twice in the space of a week or so I'd be hopping mad - how much more for something a trillion times more serious than a silly haircut! And if you saw the haircut I got, you would think it silly too! In fact, this past twenty years or more, all my haircuts have been silly and embarrassing, no matter what barber I go to. Perhaps that's the difference between a barber and a hairdresser?

Easter Thoughts

Here we are again at another Easter and, whether you're a believer or not, it is the commemoration of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the founder of Christiany, and it is also the hope and promise of everlasting life. Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross for all humanity and we mark this occasion every year, as has been done for thousands of years now by Christians all round the world. Like it or loathe it, Easter is celebrated in church halls up and down the country and at many other venues and, like Christmas, it is a time of the year when perhaps a little pause for reflexion and stock-taking would not go amiss in the hustle and bustle of our ever-more hectic lives. So what is the Christmas message exactly and have we lived up to it in our modern-day world?

I would first like to make it clear that in trying to understand the significance of Easter, I am not advocating any particular philosophy, doctrine or belief, and that I am addressing both believers and non-believers. My purpose is not to attempt to convert anyone to Christianity but to make some general observations on where we stand today on the whole subject of Easter. So I am not preaching at anyone, just conveying my own personal thoughts.

Around 2,000 years ago a man called Jesus taught us how to lead a good life, how to conduct ourselves and how to treat our fellow man. And he was prepared to back up his beliefs by sacrificing himself. In doing so he hoped that mankind would learn the lesson and embark on the path that he had set before us, the path to a better life, the path to justice, selflessness, love and righteousness. So how are we doing so far?

It seems that we have misunderstood Jesus's message somewhere along the way and we've created a society of greed, gluttony, vanity, avarice, and selfishness, with Money as our God and its pursuit as our life's aim.  This has always been the case, of course, just as in Jesus's time, but now I think we have perfected a society of greed and gluttony and, with no longer any belief in God to curb our appetites and our overweening ambition, we can give free rein to the dictates of our avarice and egotism with no pangs of conscience to hold us back. Anything that matters has a price on it and anything that cannot be priced is valueless, not to say worthless. We only seem to understand the intrinsic worth of anything if it bears a price tag.

Though we appear to prize human virtues and praise moral rectitude, the truth of the matter is that  beyond wanting the well-being of people who contribute to our happiness and well-being in life and without whom even wealth would be meaningless, again a purely selfish motive when you really think about it, our life is given over to self-enrichment and self-promotiion and there is little of Christianity or any other doctrine of selflessness and self-sacrifice. Jesus may have sacrificed himself for humanity, for us, for the salvation of mankind and the world, but we would not sacrifice a a hair on our head if it meant foregoing one of our creature comforts. 

But the truly frightening thing when one considers the Easter story in a modern context is that if Jesus were to come upon this earth again, he could expect a similar reception and a similar outcome. Though he would not be crucified today, some other method of death would probably await him, perhaps in the manner of Martin Luther King or Gandhi, so as to silence him forever.  After all, everything that Jesus preached would be an attack on our society as it exists today and would harm the financial interests of practically everyone. Only the poor and the dispossessed would be likely to welcome his message, but of course power does not lie with them and, as in Jesus's time when Rome ruled the Holy Land, it would be the rich and powerful who would be the effective instrument of his downfall and dispatch.

(to be completed)