The spirit of Easter

THERE was a drinks party yesterday. A written invitation came for Friday, March 28th - for drinks, from 5 to 7. Catherine was literally shocked. There were 364 other days you could ask people for drinks, 51 other Fridays, why make such a deliberate gesture of defiance and blasphemy and have it on Good Friday?

I said a lot of people didn't think of it like that, that there was probably nothing deliberate about it, they thought of it as a holiday weekend.

But she said that even if you didn't practise your own religion you should care about the sensitivities of others who did. And what about 2,000 years of Christians marking the day that Our Lord was crucified? I must be very naive if I didn't think it was making a statement to hold a celebration, a party with drink at it on that day. The pubs weren't even open, for heaven's sake.

Well why don't you tell them? I said eventually. Tell them why you won't go, it's perfectly possible to say these things pleasantly and calmly.

Deep inside I wondered was it, but Catherine was so exercised by it, she must not be allowed to brood and become incensed. To her credit, she did telephone and put her point of view - no voices were raised, and no friendships broken.

She reported the result.

The host and hostesss and to Catherine that they were of course aware it was Good Friday but they assumed people who would want to mark the day in a special way would not come to their house to a party. They looked on it as a matter for individual choice, something people would take their own stand about. If they had offended her by the invitation they were sorry.

Catherine agreed it had not been a deliberate and calculated insult to the Christian faith as she had believed it to be. But it was an amazing pointer to the way things had changed, she said, which is of course true, and something nobody could argue with.

WHEN I lived in London, Easter was a time for huge garden centre activity. I bought my first Flame of the Forest on an Easter Sunday out in Syon Park with a thousand others who were having an outing complete with slides for the children, ice creams and dreams for all of gorgeous green lawns and luscious, pest free plants.

A woman I know has set herself up as a garden adviser, right in the heart of London. She will come and examine your little patch even though it might be a tiny patio with five pots and two window boxes. Then she will draw up a list of what you should get on your Easter outing.

She charges £20 an hour and £5 for the list. She will write down the Latin name, the ordinary name and tell you approximately how much it should cost. She thinks she saves the customers their £25 over and over. A kind of madness overcomes people in the garden centre at Easter. They move far away from reality, they buy enough compost for a small forest, they get things that will die in the shade and things that need half a mile for their roots and bear them back triumphantly to small, dark basements.

But she is enough of a dreamer herself to know she may be taking some of the magic away from the outing to the garden centre. Her clients won't look speculatively at magnolia trees or water gardens today when they arrive among the plants.

"I hope I'm doing the right thing," she said, utterly honestly. "After all, the whole meaning of this holiday is planning a garden, isn't it? Always has been. I don't want to take the spirit of Easter away from people."

THE twins have been magnificent during Lent, everyone says so. In these days it's not all that usual to know two 12 year olds who gave up sweets and chocolate of every sort. They didn't even eat biscuits with bits of chocolate in them as a cheat.

So everyone is very proud of them. Doting grandparents and aged friends of the family like ourselves have gone out of their way to get huge Easter Eggs for them. The chocolate eggs stand on the mantlepiece and get sniffed and handled, and tomorrow they will be opened. Some of them contain other sweets in their hollow insides but it's mainly the lovely, honeycombed wodges of chocolate that are being coveted. We can all taste them on our tongues now, so often have they been described and anticipated.

The twins have promised to have a small bit of lamb and potatoes but their hearts aren't in it. The main event will not be roasted in an oven, but wrapped in coloured foil.

Of course they'll be sick, their mother says philosophically; they were sick last year and the year before. But come on, six weeks denial in this day and age - they're entitled to be sick, for heaven's sake. What is Easter all about if you can't eat too much chocolate and get sick? Hasn't that been the way for centuries?

EVERY Easter Monday these two old men go to Fairyhouse. They've been doing this for years now. They meet regularly on a Friday for a pint anyway, and they give the barman £1.50 each so by the time it comes to Easter they have a tidy sum.

Then they get the bus from Busarus, and they put £50 each on the hose of a horse in the Irish Grand National. One of them won once and he bought three cashmere wool scarves, one for each of them and one for the barman who holds their money. They wear them to this day. Extraordinary warmth in them.

They don't bet for the rest of the year. They never got into the habit of it since they were never able to afford it, bringing up families and all. They never go to the races, you'd need big money to be doing that, and the time off and everything. But every Easter Monday for 30 years they've been going to Fairyhouse, they go early on the first bus and come back late. They never tell anyone - their sons, their grandsons - which horse they're going to back. People would have expectations if it won. Only the barman knows the names.

They're getting a bit unsteady on their pins these days but still they'll go. It's Easter, after all, and what is the spirit of Easter if it's not the chance for a working man to go to the races and put £50 on a horse to win?