Easter and Holy Week ... Memories

 In Canada, Easter is celebrated, not commemorated. It’s a time of sweetness and joy, marked by hot-cross buns and chocolate eggs left behind by a cheerful rabbit.

The origins of this celebration, however, reach far back, long before Christianity. In the Northern Hemisphere, Easter echoes ancient traditions linked to Ishtar, the Mesopotamian Akkadian goddess of love, fertility, and war, venerated as the “Queen of Heaven” and associated with the planet Venus. At its heart, Easter is about renewal, the awakening of spring, the return of life after a long, cold winter.

In El Salvador, things were very different. We didn’t celebrate Easter. We commemorated Holy Week. It was a time devoted to the commemoration of Christ’s martyrdom. It was solemn, somber, and filled with silent reverence. There were long masses and slow processions.

Sonsonate is one of the places in El Salvador where Holy Week commemorations are known for their historical significance. It was a place where the symbols of Christ’s suffering were depicted on heavy platforms carried on the shoulders of men. These men, all members of “La Cofradía del Santo Entierro” (the Brotherhood of the Holy Burial), dressed in black robes, spent the entire year preparing for this solemn moment. The processions were escorted by countless parishioners through twelve stations, at each of which people had created elaborate floor designs with colored salts and sawdust. The processions were accompanied by mournful chants and a constant, almost suffocating sense of suffering and death in the air, filled with the smell of incense that young altar boys, dressed in black or purple robes, carried in censers hanging from long golden chains.

As a teenager, I often spent Holy Week in Sonsonate, in my uncle’s house.

Even with the solemnity of the season, there was always a spark of mischief among us boys. During the processions, we would steal glances, exchange shy smiles, and find any excuse to walk alongside the girls we liked, especially those whose parents trusted “the devout boys” attending the processions and therefore allowed us to accompany them.

One memory, in particular, still brings a mix of embarrassment and an unavoidable smile. It must have been when I was around 14 years old.

I liked a girl who was a friend of my cousin. I hoped she would attend the procession of the Holy Burial. I was hoping to get a chance to talk to her. I asked my uncle for permission to go, and he agreed, but on one condition: my cousin had to come with me, and I had to stay with her at all times.

I wasn’t thrilled about that, but if Rosa Elena, the girl I liked, was going to be there, it was worth it. Besides, if I were with my cousin María Angélica, it was much more likely that Rosa Elena would talk to me. What I didn’t know at the time was that my cousin had a boyfriend, and that my uncle didn’t want her to see him. In his eyes, they were far too young.

Still, full of hope and trying to feel brave, I went with my cousin to the procession, quietly wishing to run into Rosa Elena.

We walked for a while, swallowed by a sea of people. Hidden in that anonymity, my heart pounding, I gathered my courage and asked my cousin if Rosa Elena was coming.

María Angélica listened and then, without hesitation, delivered a sharp and unforgettable answer:

“I don’t know… anyway, she doesn’t like you. Bye!” And just like that, she vanished.

She leaped gracefully over a small iron fence protecting a garden, ran across it, and disappeared into the crowd to meet her boyfriend, a detail I would only discover later.

Back then, María Angélica was slim, quick, and agile; her leap was almost elegant. I, on the other hand, was a fat teenager with flat feet, completely incapable of chasing after her, and she knew it.

I stood there, frozen. Stunned. Ashamed. Completely alone in the middle of the procession.

I could feel my hopes collapsing inside my chest, as if the crowd were swallowing me whole, along with my pride.

But the nightmare wasn’t over. I still had to return to her house and explain to my uncle why his daughter wasn’t with me.

When I arrived, he was lying peacefully in his hammock, reading. Awkwardly and nervously, I explained what had happened, that she had left me, that I didn’t know where she was.

He glanced at me briefly. Then he dismissed me without a word.

That silence hurt more than any scolding.

I left feeling small, frustrated, and completely out of place. Guilt pressed down on me, heavy and confusing, even though I didn’t fully understand what I had done wrong. I felt a need to atone for something I couldn’t even name.

So, in a small but dramatic act of teenage despair, I threw away the four cigarettes I just had bought with my last ten cents.

I went to bed early that night and didn’t even see Rosa Elena.