One of the laughable occurrences I have known about easter is that a girl-child born within that period is most likely named Esther.

The fact that Queen Esther was known for her beauty and Easter is known for the ugliness of Jesus' crucifixion doesn't matter.

The fact that there are 483 years between Christ's birth and the book of Esther...notwithstanding.

As long as Esther sounds like Easter, the homophones must satisfy us beyond the history.

Ah yes, Easter is history and everything that happened from Christ's betrayal to his merciless beating. We stand today years after, to gaze upon that day with awe-stricken nostalgia as his own disciple, Judas Iscariot sold his master out in a spiteful but successful plot.

No one names his child Judas. Parents don't care that there is another Judas in scripture that didnt betray Jesus neither do they consider that Jesus and Judas might be just as much like Easter and Esther.

To think that Judas,who didnt betray Jesus lived around the time Jesus did and we run off to 483 years before to bring a name for our female children...a name that has no objective relationship with the event tell us that stories; narratives easily trump fact. And 'Judas' will never be a name on the good side of history. Never! Removing Iscariot doesn't make the name less dreadful.

The power of history, one would say.

Now that there are no easter names for our male babies...well there actually is. People are bold enough to name their sons Jesus. No harm, except that the bearers are hardly as pious or as powerful as the man who first bore it.

In Easter, let us remember very little of the fetish we make about it...the names we give our children for it, the parties we have in remembrance of Christ's death or even the plot we watch in films to revitalize the event of the crucifixion on Jerusalem's stony hills.

It is a time to study...not HOW he died but WHY Christ died for you.

What makes one man's death resonate through the chimes of history to make a meaning to our 21st century existence?

What makes the punishment of a 1st century Jewish man on a wooden cross mean something to me who never saw him, knew him or could save him from his fate?

A mighty death it was. So mighty...we didnt need to be there and yet, stories from that day lay prostrate in our minds. We hush and hum in our quiet holiday resorts...telling friends why we didnt show up at work. It is Easter, we say.