Rare Coincidence in Christian Feasts Invites Humor As Well As Devotion
This year Christians celebrate Christ's conception and death on the same day-March 25. Bizarre coincidences occur in any religion, but New York humor writer Kathleen McCormick specializes in Catholic ones in her coming-of-age novel, "Dodging Satan."
- New York, NY (1888PressRelease) March 23, 2016 - The Feasts of the Christ's Passion (Good Friday) and the Annunciation (March 25, exactly 9 months before Christmas day) very rarely coincide, and set up an eerie convergence in the Christian Church's traditional calendar. Most Christians acknowledge Jesus' conception on March 25 and his death on Good Friday. "But commemorating them on the same day? Definitely beyond weird," notes McCormick who believes such Christian oddities can create fantastical misinterpretations in children, particularly in her novel's child protagonist, Bridget Flaherty.
Apparently even adult believers find the confluence of these Feasts disconcerting. "The 17th century poet John Donne wrote a famous poem in 1608-when the two days also coincided-on the strangeness of 'this doubtful day of feast or fast' when Christ's 'first and last concur,'" says McCormick who confesses that, as a child, she had to create "some pretty wacky ways" to understand the paradoxes and coincidences of Catholicism.
In "Dodging Satan: My Irish/Italian, Sometimes Awesome, But Mostly Creepy Childhood," set outside of Catholic Boston in the 60s and 70s, McCormick celebrates a child's capacity to create outlandish explanations of religious vagaries. Bridget's is a world where frightening and glorious relationships exist between phosphorous and holiness, virgins and bicycles, crucifixes and spices, purgatory and card games, silkworms and puberty, ears and pregnancy.
Bridget's musings on a time-travelling Virgin Mary (how else can one understand her continual apparitions?), on God-the-Father's romantic life with Adam and Eve, her exorcism of devils from a second grade classmate, and her discovery of the "holy" in holy water will delight readers. Is Bridget's religious fervor a way of avoiding the tension, violence, and sexual problems of her Irish/Italian family life? Certainly.
This year Catholic Church has found a way to avoid the problem of the "first/last" day of Christ by moving the celebration of the Annunciation 10 days later, yet Eastern Orthodoxy keeps them together, asking believers to both celebrate and mourn. While there may be little historical evidence for either date, both are important for traditional Christians, but the Catholic date shifting "may establish in young minds an oddly dislocated belief system," McCormick observes wryly.
Kathleen McCormick is available for interviews on this and other intriguing paradoxes of religious belief.
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