Aren't all Fridays Good?

I was joking with my friend Heidi today about not eating meat and all that, because she mentioned she shouldn't be eating red meat (an aspiring vegetarian), and I asked, "Says who?" and she responded, "Jesus." When I inquired about any new found Good Friday-ness, she said "Are you nuts?" She didn't even remember that it was Good Friday. And that's why she's my friend.

When I was a kid, Good Friday meant a day off from school, so Hell, yeah, I was into it. But, come on. Think about the history; the way I heard it, the real reason people give up meat during lent is because hundreds of years ago, the fishermen went to the Pope and complained that these new ways of cooking meat were cutting into their business, so Popey declared that people couldn't eat meat on Fridays as a sacrifice to Jesus, who died on the Friday before Easter. Lazy modern Roman Catholics have backed it off to just during lent. Personally, I only eat food that had parents on Fridays as a sacrifice to myself, and boy is it good. I mean, why do people do this? Are they eating Jesus or something? I mean, they have the whole body and blood of Christ thing. That Catholic Church sure has some crazy shit.

I don't mean to offend a whole religious sect or anything, because I really wanted to tell a funny story with this post. years ago, I went to Papa Gino's (They come up a lot in this blog), and they had a sign for a "Lenten Special" that offered deals on their barbecue chicken pizza, and I think even their Hawaiian pizza (although I may be making that one up). I asked the guy at the register if that was for lapsed Catholics, because, y'know, chicken? Ham? He responded: "Well, I'm not Catholic, so, I really don't know much about it."

Amen, brother.

I just don't understand some of these silly traditions. I found some odd ones on Wikipedia. For example, "In Bermuda, kites are flown. They are often handmade with wooden sticks, colorful tissue paper, glue, and string. The shape of the kite and the use of wood is meant to symbolize the cross that Jesus died on." Are the kites predominantly red, by any chance? Maybe some thorns to decorate them? I mean, isn't that a morbid tradition?

Apparently, a lot of folks have renamed Easter Spring Holiday, because it removes all of the religious crap, even renaming the Easter bunny the Spring Bunny, which is kinda dumb because the Easter Bunny is about the least religious thing in the world (unless they were Mary's eggs.) Again, from Wiki: "Some Christians view the use of this term as part of, or as an expansion of, the secularization of Christian holidays and claim that renaming this Christian holiday is an overzealous application of political correctness." I'm no religious zealot, but I gotta agree on that one. Who wants to celebrate Spring Holiday? What do we do to celebrate? What we do every holiday, Pinky: Drink!

Maybe it's time we do away with religion. It just causes disaster most of the time.