Non-believers celebrate religious feast days, too

April 12, 2026 — 5:30am

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I say I do not believe in God, yet as I age, I take great joy in Pascha (Passover, or Pecha), Eastern Orthodox Easter. Jesus rises twice in our house — last week as a Catholic, this Saturday at midnight as Orthodox.

“It’s not just you guys that have Easter,” my wife said on Friday, digging at our Greek superiority complex. But we know that really, we’re the first. (Saul, or Paul, had to write to the Corinthians, Thessalonians and Ephesians – if the Greeks didn’t take up the new creed, a kind of Judaism-lite for gentiles, the Romans never would have.)

In Spain, they eat potaje – chickpea and bacalao (codfish) soup – followed by torrijas – Spanish-style French toast. My late communist father had no time for the church: “tools of the state. They always side with power,” he’d say. Yet, Pascha mattered even for him. His name, Anastasios, means resurrection, and Easter Sunday is his name day.

“Jesus was a radical........

© Brisbane Times