Time On The Cross

Easter, the spring celebration of birth and regeneration with hot cross buns, chocolate eggs, funny bunnies and a long weekend too. Whoopee! 'What you doing for Easter Jesus? Oh just hanging about.' The christians stuck it on the Romans but they got their retaliation in first. 'Put your feet together mate, I've only got one nail left.' And he obliged, gentle Jesus meek and mild, except when kicking the money changers out of the temple and running pigs off a cliff.

Spring, the death of winter and resurrection. Here's how to calculate when the festival occurs, it's the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Simples! 'Spring is sprung, The grass is ris, I wonder where the birdies is, Some say the bird is on the wing, But that's absurd, Surely the wing is on the bird?'

Absurd. Easter like xmas, when people go to cold stone buildings and do a lot of mumbling. (Thank you Eddie Izzard.) Me I can't bear to see that bleeding man on a cross, I never could, it frightened me as a boy, but then I was brought up in a time when death, blood and suffering wasn't the norm. He died for our sins even though we weren't born and yet to commit any, not that there's anything quite so simple minded as sin. No, he died because the established religious zealots wanted him out of the way. He was treading on their turf. Nail him up.

Mr Steiner came to a New York advertising agency and asked them for an original poster to promote the sale of the nails he manufactured. The creative department got to work and produced something to their liking. When Mr Steiner saw it he held his head and tore his hair. It showed Jesus on the cross and one Roman soldier saying to another, 'For a good job well done use Steiner's nails!'  No, no, no it wouldn't do, he would lose all his goyim customers! They had to try again. A week later Mr Steiner was called back to see the new poster. He fainted. It showed an empty cross in the foreground and two Roman soldiers pursuing a half naked man across the distant hills. One soldier was shouting to the other, 'This wouldn't have happened if we used Steiner's nails!'