Hamming It Up at Easter

No, it’s not so much the case here in Texas, where brisket seems to be the meat of choice for Easter feasts, but in the rest of the country, at least, on Easter Sunday, people eat ham.

It is more than a blip in sales at those spiral cut ham stores. Easter makes their year.

But yesterday as I was buying my package of ham slices on sale I had to stop and ask myself why the heck we Americans eat ham at Easter.

It’s not like Jesus ate ham. Jesus, after all, was Jewish and eschewed the products of porkdom. Jesus kept kosher, I think, even though the New Testament doesn’t mention it at all, I think anyone who called himself a rabbi kept kosher.

So I looked it up.

And no, it hasn’t got a single thing to do with religion. Like just about all Easter traditions, eating ham at Easter has nothing to do with Jesus. Like just about all Easter traditions, it all has to do with springtime.

In the before times, before we had electricity, before we had refrigeration, we Americans did our slaughtering in the fall and the meats that weren’t eaten then were preserved through a process of curing, a long slow process that took all winter to complete. So really, the first opportunity to put out a spread for an Easter feast came just as the curing process was complete.

A happy coincidence that became tradition after ice boxes and later, refrigerators, became part of the household furniture.

Now on to my next investigation. Why the heck do Germans eat carp on Christmas Eve?

Jesus + Cheetos = Cheesus

It’s Easter and while the Easter Texas chili is smoldering in the crock pot, I looked left and right for an appropriate thing to write about. My first thought was to find a photograph of the Pillsbury Dough Boy, (aka Poppin’ Fresh) to put up with the title “He is Risen” but decided that might be too crass and insensitive.

Yes, even I have thoughts like that from time to time.

Then I happened across this obscure piece on Houston’s KHOU website. Apparently the youth minister at the Memorial Drive United Methodist Church, Steve Cragg, has stumbled across the latest religious apparition to make the news.

Shortly before beginning a recent Cheetos nosh, something stopped Steve from popping yet another Cheetos tasty morsel in his mouth and grinding it to insignificant bits of corn puff and cheesy powder. He stopped to examine its unique shape. From one side it looked like a cute two-legged dog. Turning it around, however, what should he find but an image of Jesus Christ himself stretching out his arms to his adoring masses.

Either that or, as one of Cragg’s students suggested, it kind of looks like Lieutenant Dan in the movie Forrest Gump.

Still and all, a religious apparition is just as good as its recognition, and this Cheeto bears an uncanny resemblance to the Savior of the world.

So be it.

In Cheesus’ name.

UPDATE: Cheesus has returned! Cheesus II: The Second Coming