A cross from where?

Musings from a godless woman.

I tell people that my family doesn’t celebrate Easter for religious reasons but for the brunch.

My dad grew up catholic and decided to not put his own children through that. I’m not sure where my mom’s family falls on the spiritually spectrum, we spend Christmas with them and there were rumblings of having attended Midnight Mass back in the day, but growing up with a Jewish best friend meant I experienced more synagogs than sermons.

I’m not baptized or confirmed, which means I’m fair game in the eyes of the lord when it comes to converting if I fall in love with someone religious and want my own Nobody Wants This moment. It also means I’m going to hell if you believe in that.

I watched an interview on CNN where Jake Tapper asked the cousin of one of the Artemis Astronauts if he was a religious man considering their mission falls over Easter Weekend, and how he reconciles religion with science as an astronaut. This felt like a ridiculous question to spend precious airtime on a segment that’s covering the first mission to the moon in decades. Who cares? She gave a pretty good answer that would please the masses—while he believes the universe is the result of a spectacular scientific event, God was the one who made that event possible.

According to TikTok and the mainstream media, Catholicism is on the rise and it’s actually trendy for Gen-Z to go to mass. People are meeting likeminded friends and prospective significant others in the West Village—something otherwise impossible for the last five years if you’ve been watching TikTok and reading the mainstream media.

Growing up without religion meant that Easter and Christmas were about outfits, presents, but most importantly, spending time with the people closest to you and eating good food. Both holidays revolve around potatoes mixed with four types of cheeses and corn flakes, which I guess makes my religion the Midwest.

My earliest memories of Easter are when my dad was still working for Golf Digest, he and my mom would invite his colleagues / their friends and their families over for an Easter Egg hunt, followed by cheesy potatoes and ham, and what I could imagine was a pretty early ending considering we were probably five. There are pictures of me in a straw hat, peplum dress, and pristinely white sandals, waving to the camera with my basket full of eggs, undoubtedly the buddings of my competitive spirit and love of looking good while winning.

“The Easter bunny” used to leave a jelly bean trail over night, leading from the feet of our beds, down the stairs, and to our baskets which were designated with an “O” for Olivia or “G” for Grace also out of jelly beans. My dad would yell about stepping on them about two hours after the magic had worn off, and my mom would wordlessly hand me and Grace empty ziplocks to fill that then became a treat for days to come. My mom is and always will be the best host as well as the best mom, giving us presents for every minor holiday. While my friends were getting chocolate bunnies and being forced to 9 am services, I was getting Nintendo DS games and playing them all afternoon once everyone left the party.

People like to debate the importance of religion when raising a family. Speaking for myself, it doesn’t seem that important. I still have morals and grew up afraid of a larger power without naming it “God”. Turns out, that was actually anxiety and OCD.

Of course, I grew up with immense fomo when it came to organized religion. I wanted to go on the service trip to Appalachia, I wanted a batmizvah. I wanted to be in on the jokes from CCD. I wanted to wear a cross. One of those things I could control:

I have vivid memories of reading in J14 magazine that Miley Cyrus was reading the Bible cover to cover and thinking that was really cool. It wasn’t until high school when I found out about Vice Media and people like Louis Theroux who would go to the Westboro Baptist Church or invade a cult when I found out that some churches were bad, that some people were being hurt and not everything was laughing with your friends and wearing a sparkly dress.

Maybe I had fomo because I was Godless. Maybe if I had a God, I wouldn’t feel left out because he would will those negative emotions out of me, like a Southern Baptist-style exorcism. Maybe the dainty, beautiful diamond-encrusted Star of David around my deck would create a forcefield against negativity. Maybe the fact that I would be a real, genuine WASP, straight out of Connecticut would provide me with enough sense of community to never feel left out or alone.

People are always surprised when I tell them Easter is one of my favorite holidays. It’s funny because at first, it makes me sound like I love Jesus. I’m sure if I knew him I would, he’s kind of one of those to know him is to love him types like Paul Rudd or Samuel L. Jackson. But the reality is I love wearing a cute spring outfit, getting lightly drunk off of mimosas in the comfort of my own childhood home during the afternoon, and eating all day. This is a little sacrilegious in nature, I know the true meaning of Easter is much deeper and inspiring, a tale of immaculate resurrection and the triumph of life over death (thank you, Gemini).

Something I did not and still do not have fomo over is Lent. I don’t understand how giving up TikTok is going to make you closer to Jesus. It’s the same thing with New Years Resolutions. I also think people should just do whatever makes them happy, and if that’s Lent or a resolution, knock yourself out.

As I write this, I’m in the middle seat on the 4:48 metro north train back to Manhattan. The guy to my right is resting his elbow in the nook where my thigh meets my hip and having open dialogue with ChatGPT. I hope he also enjoyed this week’s Coffee Order.

I consumed some pretty life-changing media this week. The first is Madeline Cash’s first novel, Lost Lambs, which was intercepted to me by my dear friend Nicholson after he gave our other friend Seth a book he already read for his birthday. I had seen a lot of press for this book including an Interview Magazine feature, private launch parties, and cool girls on Instagram posing with the book half covering their face, which is honestly the best press you could ever ask for. I immediately felt insecure about another person close to my age writing a book. To add insult to injury, it was revealed in the Interview Magazine article that she also lived near me. The walls of success were closing in. This is what led to me booking a solo trip to Copenhagen this summer to serve as a pseudo writing retreat.

Anyway, back to Lost Lambs. It was one of the most spectacular novels I’ve read in recent memory. From War Crimes Wes to Louise, to the gnats to the billionaires, I was seriously sad when it was over. Cash has a way of narrative storytelling that’s both inspiring and envy inducing. I highly recommend if you’re looking for something fun as the weather warms up, but not fun in a Kindle Unlimited lobotomy read type of way, fun in a way that makes you think and reflect and laugh out loud.

The next was The Drama. I went back and forth in my head about discussing this because it just came out and I don’t want to accidentally spoil anything, especially since I didn’t know what the twist was and that made the experience tenfold better.

I hadn’t realized that I had watched one of Kristoffer Borgli’s movies with an old flame last year, Dream Scenario starring Nicholas Cage, and thoroughly enjoyed it. If you’re not new around here, you know that I love weird movies, books, TV, men, music, etc. Kristoffer’s got weird on lock, and it was cool to see him execute that with such mega mainstream movie stars. The editing and the music alone is worth going to see it, and if you’re as shocked as I am, the experience on Twitter afterwards is even more-so.

The third and final was Tiny Furniture, Lena Dunham’s second film from 2010 that catapulted her into writing Girls. The movie is about Lena, called Aura, moving home once she’s graduated college, just having broke up with her boyfriend, carrying a lot of mental and physical baggage with her including a brat complex and a pet mouse.

I cannot believe I hadn’t seen this movie before. A Lena Dunham written and directed movie, starring Lena Dunham and Jemima Kirke, about a bratty 22 year old who is way too privileged to be acting the way she does, working at Clandestino? It gave me a weird feeling like the trajectory I’ve been on (having spent thousands of dollars and way too many nights at Clandestino over the years as a Lena Dunham disciple) is the trajectory I’m supposed to be on, and that everything will work out just fine.

I wanted to watch Tiny Furniture ahead of her memoir release next week. I’m seeing her talk about it with Andrew Randalls next Tuesday in Brooklyn, and I want to make sure I have every single ounce of backstory I could possibly have. Of course, I was again full of that existential crisis of not having produced a defining body of work at the age of 25, especially since Lena was only 22 when Tiny Furniture came out.

Lena Dunham is one of those people like Gwyneth (Paltrow) who I have a thousand questions for. Should I freestyle my first book or follow an outline? Why would anyone read it if I’m nobody? How do I justify this very Hannah Horvath period of my life? She’s someone who seems like they have all of the answers to me. She would laugh if she knew I felt that way. But in the same vein, I feel like she understands why I feel that way. That movie was like looking in a mirror. I had never felt so seen by anything in my life. And while I’m not doing a lot of the things Aura was (i.e. with the coworker in the pipe), it made me feel like I was Timothee Chalamet watching Good Will Hunting or something. I couldn’t believe that Jemima Kirke has just always been a genius. I couldn’t believe they actually filmed it inside of Clandestino.

Maybe I learned more from Tiny Furniture and Girls than I ever would’ve from CCD. Maybe investing in the Criterion Channel is going to give me a higher ROI than any organized religion would’ve. Time will tell, that’s for sure.