Memories of Easter

In Canada, Easter is celebrated, not commemorated. It’s a time of sweetness and joy, marked by hot cross buns and chocolate eggs, supposedly 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 martyrdom of Christ: solemn, somber, and filled with silent reverence. There were long masses, slow processions, mournful chants, and a constant, almost suffocating sense of suffering and death in the air. As a child, I often spent Holy Week in Sonsonate. And yet, even with all that solemnity, 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 1969 or 1970 when I was 13 or 14 years old. I liked a girl who was a friend of my cousin. I hoped she would attend the Holy Burial procession, maybe I would 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 the girl I liked was going to be there, it was worth it. Besides, if I was 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 seeing 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, 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 an odd need to punish myself, 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 had bought with my last ten cents. I didn’t see Rosa Elena that evening and María Angélica left me standing in the middle of the solemn procession a lesson that would take me years to understand.