**Insert Bad Egg Pun Here**

If you don't worship our saviour, why celebrate our holiday?

The Christian groups are pretty active on the St Lucia campus, and over the past week I've seen the above sentence on several of their sandwich boards. Beyond the vaguest irritation, I have no particular issue with them doing their thing. I'm the life-and-let-live type. But I do take exception to that statement.

You, being the well-read type that you are, don't need telling that Easter has its origins in pre-Christian culture. No less an eminence than the Venerable Bede wrote that the name derives from the name of the Anglo-Saxon goddess of fertility, rebirth and spring, Eostre. Accounts vary on just what characteristics Eostre had; some say she had hare's ears; others say she carried a basket of eggs around; yet others have it that she had a rabbit pal who hid eggs in amongst the greenery to bring new life to them. Most seem to agree that she was a playful lass who everyone was pleased to be welcoming, along with the warm weather and all that that meant after a long, dark winter.

It's autumn here, so the rituals associated with Easter make as much sense as the other European cultural imports do. We have no breaking of frost to celebrate, no garlands of flowers to gather. Despite that, I like it as a cultural connection to my European roots. Easter to me is a big sigh of relief that summer -- not winter -- is over, and the sanity of cool weather is on the way. For the first time in months, we can hide chocolate eggs in the backyard and be fairly certain that they won't be an ant-infested puddle within the hour. That's worth a Super-Size serve of whoopee, for sure.

So it's not your bloody holiday, thanks very much. I'm happy enough to share it with you, but when you start snatching and grabbing I get a bit cranky. Now have an Easter bilby and be nice.