A Failure to Coincide

 

   When I was a kid, I wished I had been born one day earlier, on the 25th of March rather than the 26th. March 25th is the Feast of the Annuciation and I would have been a minor celebrity if I had been born on that day.

   I went to a parochial elementary school in Boston, where it felt like 95% of the population of the city was Catholic. The first hour of the school day was Religion class. We soaked up the old stories in Genesis and Exodus and studied the deeds of the saints.

   Sister would list off the holy days and the saint's feast days and ask if anyone was born on that day. Any child born on St. Patricks Day for example was naturally a Patrick or a Patricia. Those children would receive a pat on the head from sister which caused a halo to hover over their head until math class.

   When the Feast of the Annunciation was called out, I cursed my luck for being born a day late. I had been born at six in the evening so I couldn't blame my mother for being a slow poke. In high school, also at a Catholic institution, this business of being born on a saint's day went by the wayside as we delved into the grey areas of sin. The nuances of sin constantly need updating. Yes, you could let your ox or ass out to drink on the Sabbath, but that didn't help us urbanites much. We needed to know when venial sin, a misdemeanor, shaded into being a capital offense meriting damnation. This was excellent prep work for those going on to law school.

   By the time I got to college, a place run by the Jesuits, it was not cool at all to care about being born on a saint's day. That's when I finally got some ecclesiastical credibility. But it was much too late for me.  In 1967, Easter fell on my birthday. How great would that have been back in Holy Name School? That would  have been maxima maximus bonificius! Unfortunately tempus by then had fugited.

   Then it happened again in 1978. By that point I was living in Lutherland. "Well isn't that special," folks would say, when I mentioned the conjunction between my birth and Jesus' resurrection. When Easter fell again on my birthday in 1989, I kept it to myself. I had fallen into a holiday slough of despond by then. 

   I eventually got my mojo back and noticed recently that Easter hasn't  fallen on my birthday in decades. Easter can range between March 22 and April 25. The date is determined by the first full moon after the spring equinox. Easter will be the first Sunday after that. Why is it done like that? Because Jesus rose from the dead during the Jewish feast of Passover and Passover's date is pegged to the equinox-first full moon cycle. Why? It goes back to Egypt and the first Passover when the Jews got their freedom from Pharaoh.   

   I looked up the schedule for the dates of future Easters and discovered that Easter won't fall on my birthday again until 2062, by which time I expect to have moved on. But wherever I am, I plan to gather my old Holy Name sisters and all my classmates to celebrate, and I hope Jesus shows up too to pat me on the head. A halo would make the perfect gift.

The Annunciation by Fra Angelico. So close, so close.