Guest Post: Sarah, Hollywood Housewife: EASTER

My friend Sarah, a recently transplanted Englishwoman and an incredible painter (go to her blog to view her work), writes very amusingly about her religiously-confused children this Easter. You can read her blog here. -- Miss Whistle

EASTER
My poor children are theologically confused..I am a protestant, all three children were baptized Catholic like their father. In England we attended the beautiful Farm Street Church regularly and I became very good friends with the priests who were hoping to convert me. On one occasion in church Grace aged 7 turned to me and said "Mum, you shouldn't be here! You're a Prod!" Now I wonder where she got that idea from. We moved to Los Angeles when Gabe was 5, Grace was 10 and Esther 1. Gabriel started to attend the local Jewish community school.. a wonderful local preschool recommended by our neighbour..and before too long he was singing songs in Hebrew and coming home complaining that I had not "lit the candles or bought the Challah." One day around Passover he came home and said to me "Mum you wouldn't believe what Pharaoh did to our people!"

He was sent the following year to join his elder sister at Catholic school and was rather confused and alarmed by the prospect of Jesus Christ with his stigmatas, and demanded to be "made Jewish again."

Grace then went to an independent school with no religious affiliations but with predominantly Jewish pupils. Every Saturday for about a year she was invited to a Bar Mitzvah or a Bat Mitzvah (for girls) -- all turning 13. After witnessing these lavish events and the huge bank balances these kids were left with post-Mitzvah cash injection, Grace was keen to have her own "Faux Mitzvah," an opulent money giving party for non-Jews. "No" was the answer.

So now we are full circle. Esther is at the JCC -- Jewish pre-school -- and complaining that I have not bought Challah and what about "Shabbat" and telling me that Pharaoh was a "very very Bad Man" and sings songs about frogs being everywhere. She also believes herself to be the reincarnation of Queen Esther who saved the Jewish people at one stage in the Old Testament.

Today on impulse I took them to a new church in Hancock Park which turned out to be a Billy Graham-esque happy-clappy Catholic church. This time I was confused. It was full to the brim -- over a thousand people -- and the songs were very modern and evangelical Christian. The Priest was shouting out his joyous Easter messages and the crowd was responding. He told us all to write a gratitude list but not before we'd written a "poopy list" saying why you think life stinks. I kid you not. Now I cannot imagine the Jesuits at Farm Street making the Poopy List part of their Easter Sermon.

-- Sarah, Hollywood Housewife