Dimanche Paques or Domingo Pasqua…

FROM Good Friday to Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday and Monday, the Christian world’s longest holy holiday weekend is many things to different people: a celebration of a resurrection, an extended holy day, or another universal holiday that touches everyone everywhere, believers or not.

Like everywhere else, it’s also forever been an integral part of West Indian and Caribbean culture from the day Christopher Columbus opened the way 532 years ago for bishops to bless Europe’s invasion and genocidal destruction of centuries of American civilization and replacement of First People’s religions with Christian crosses.

Every Caribbean generation has grown up observing the Lenten season, from Ash Wednesday to the long, holy holiday weekend from Good Friday to Easter Monday.

The 14 Stations of the Way of the Cross were followed annually at ‘The Calvary’ along Calvary Road in Castries Saint Lucia until 2019; and special Easter eats — from Hot Cross Buns and Porridge in Guyana to Easter Eggs and Bunny Cakes in Barbados to crusty ‘Penapice’ (Penny-a-Piece) in the 21st Century French-speaking colonies in the Caribbean and South America…
COVID-19 reshaped Easter in 2020 and 2021, but Ukraine reshaped it this year across the whole wide world.

Massy Stores, present Caribbean-wide, has issued Easter proclamations on why Easter prices are sky high, thanks to COVID-19 and Ukraine-22.

On Easter Sunday, in his first Vatican Square balcony homily to gathered souls since the pandemic’s arrival, Pope Francis referred to an “Easter of War” in Ukraine around a “cruel and senseless conflict…”

Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, head of the Church of England, told his flock that by Christian measure the UK government’s plan to ship “some” refugees to Rwanda “will not stand up to the Judgment of God.”

Head of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill, in Moscow, was told his flock in Ukraine may consider seeking another shepherd.

And following premature media celebrations that warfare hardware donated by allies would be delivered by Easter Sunday, the Ukrainian bridges, roads and railways, ports and airports they were to have traversed through were bombed.

In South Africa’s Kwazulu-Natal region, 450 deaths from unprecedented floods left thousands of families mourning while searching for missing souls and in The Philippines over 150 deaths were also recorded from bad weather, Christians observing Easter outside destroyed homes while churches still standing became shelters.

In Palestine, over 150 Palestinians and Jews were injured at the Al Aksa Mosque as annual Israeli police intervention left blood flowing from Christians and Muslims following the Way of the Cross on the Second Sunday of the Holy Month of Ramadan, while Jews broke bread to welcome the Passover.

No sign of Easter in Ukraine, however, where the grim reality of 21st Century warfare is baring its face worse than any army of Grim Reapers through mainstream and social media manipulation and weaponization of minds with grim reminders by the minute of what can happen when matters prevail over minds.

But none of the above in the Caribbean this Easter, where the usual confluence of beliefs and community of believers have seen a mosque and a synagogue coexist in Suriname for ages, or in Guyana where Christian holidays (such as Hindu and Muslim) are national celebrations across religion and culture, ethnicity and politics.

While religion and politics continued clashing in and over Ukraine, Caribbean Christians were this year mourning the loss of the Easter they knew, following the sudden death of congregations from COVID protocols and forced adjustment to the virtual reality of online services.

Easter 2022 came the Caribbean’s way just as impatience from two years of COVID Fatigue started giving way to relaxation and removal of protective protocols, despite World Health Organization (WHO) warnings that new, faster-spreading Omicron variants such as BA.1, BA.2, BA.3 and BA.4 were making Delta look like child’s play and causing new infections worldwide by the millions.

Indeed, the BA.1 variant was confirmed in Barbados on Good Friday, just as neighbouring Saint Lucia was softening entry protocols for visitors and returning nationals and fast-forwarding returns to authorised mass-crowd gatherings, from carnivals and street parties to house parties by the hundreds — and huge 10-dollar Easter weekend dancehall sessions upstairs the Castries Market, shattering the long COVID silence with booming sounds from multiple DJs.

Kite-flyers in Barbados all weekend braved being charged for not observing masking and mass- crowd protocols.

A video of a giant kite in hands of inexperienced flyers crashing down on onlookers became an instant laugh for seasoned Guyanese tropical aeronautic fliers at Hope Estate’s East Coast beachfront and near Georgetown’s Demerara Harbour Bridge.

Never mind Christians being unable to flock to churches in some places, every Caribbean person finds a way to celebrate Easter and 2022 was no different — except food and fuel prices hitting everyone equally but in different proportions, as few baked, cooked or drove less, just to save money or energy.

Same in UK and USA, where despite respective record 30-year and 40-year inflation rates, having taxed pockets and pocketbooks were not enough to prevent hundreds of charities from raising millions in Ukraine’s name.

And in the midst of it all, elderly Caribbean citizens who’ve weathered storms and hurricanes, volcanoes and earthquakes, floods and fires and lived to tell the tales, are quietly reminding those reacting to incessant, repeated images of the destruction of war on their screens to “never forget how happy and lucky we are…”

Pak, Paques or Pasqua, Easter by whatever name in any language, is a wholesome holiday celebration by Caribbean citizens at home and abroad which, like Christmas, Phagwah and Eid, is similarly observed in many different ways, with abundant joy from adopted and adapted features.