Growing up as a Roman Catholic and spending 12 years working in a church provided me with a unique perspective on not just religion, but on those that practice it.

One group were known as the CAPE Catholics. CAPE stood for Christmas Ashes Palms Easter. You would catch most of these “opportunistic believers” during Christmas, because in their minds Christmas was the biggest holiday of the year. It’s really a big birthday party where there’s a whole lot of money being spent, so can you blame them for this poor assumption?

The actual biggest holiday in terms of liturgy for the church is the Easter season. Yes, I said season, for Easter is far more than just 24 hours of chocolate induced comas. The Easter season begins Easter Sunday (after the pre-season warm-up known as Lent) and culminates in the most important holy day for Roman Catholics 40 days later… on Ascension Thursday. It is required of all Roman Catholics that you attend a mass sometime within these 40 days, or be considered a complete and total unsalvageable heathen. Shocked? Surprised? You shouldn’t be… thus goes the religion that bends to the will of man and celebrates the birth of the first modern day zombie with rabbits that lay chocolate eggs and chicks made of marshmallow.

In any case, Happy Easter!

I’m calling dibs on the tail.