This weekend is Passover and Easter, as well as April Fool’s Day, making things pretty busy for my fun-loving interfaith family. On top of all that, my spouse Helen and I are celebrating our 25th anniversary. I’m finding a lot of resonance in all four occasions.
Passover, which I never celebrated growing up in a very secular (albeit culturally Jewish) family, has become one of my favorite holidays. It’s about history, storytelling, teaching our children, freedom from oppression, and of course, food—some of my favorite things. Passover, for me, also has many queer echoes, not only in its theme of liberation:
A holiday observed at home, rather than in a place of worship with an authority directing? That’s how Helen and I honored our commitment, pre-marriage equality.
Telling a story that connects us to our community and its history? That’s queer as well; from early newsletters like the 1950s lesbian publication The Ladder to movies like Love, Simon, storytelling has brought the queer community together, inspired us, and made us feel a part of something bigger.
Finding or creating a Haggadah (the text read at the Passover seder meal) that feels right for our family? While there are parts of the Haggadah that are common to most seders, there are also a multiplicity of ways those parts can be told, and innumerable readings and reflections that can be added to the core text. Each family can share the Passover story and messages in its own way, an adaptability that feels perfect for us queer folk.
Asking questions of the text to probe its complexities and perplexities? Questioning assumptions (about who to love; about what gender looks like) is at the heart of being queer.
Overthrowing Pharaoh? We’re working on it.
This year, the conjunction of Passover and our milestone anniversary feels fitting, too. Like any relationship, a seder meal contains some bitterness (horseradish) and tears (salt water), and sometimes things crumble (matzo), but there is also sweetness, along with mortar for building (charoset, a mix of apples, nuts, honey, and wine). (I’ll refrain from drawing any analogy about the lamb shank bone. One can only take these things so far.)
Helen is Christian, though, not Jewish, so we celebrate Easter, too, at least to the extent of hiding chocolate eggs in the backyard for our son. The Easter theme of rebirth and hope resonates for me as a queer person as well. Things can get better, and there is much sweetness to be found, even if we have to search for it.
And of course, there are eggs. There’s an egg on the seder plate, a symbol both of the sacrifice given at the ancient Jewish Temple and of the cycle of life. The Easter egg represents resurrection and new life. How many of us LGBTQ folks have been through what feels like a rebirth when we come out or transition? And before Helen and I could be legally wed, we were bound closer than we ever thought possible by an egg—mine in her womb, which became our son.
April Fool’s Day does not involve eggs (unless our prankster son decides to do something like swap the fresh and hard-boiled ones in our fridge), but Helen has always told me, “I was an April Fool” for you, even if I’ve responded that I think she was just being foolish. The holiday’s spirit of fun and irreverence feels appropriate for us, too.
It’s going to be a fun weekend for my family, then, for all kinds of reasons, even if a proper anniversary cake will have to wait until I can eat leavened food again. A quarter of a century is a long time to be doing anything, but I’m looking forward to the next 25 years (and beyond) with Helen and to the stories we will create together.
Whatever and however you may be celebrating in the next few days (Saturday is also the Transgender Day of Visibility) may it be joyous and full of love.