Christ-O-Rama

Pascha nears (lo, this year Orthodox and Everyone Else's Easter are on the same date), and inevitably or should I say inexorably so do the dirty old panhandling Jesus-story-blaring front covers of "news" publications. "Buy our magazine and get the latest on Christ! Or Mary! Or Mary Magdalene! (Whore? Or the Original First Lady? You Decide.)" It's started a tad early, online where early news generally dwells, with a breezy piece about a documentary director who discovered the tomb of Jesus. (The tomb was actually found 27 years ago by Israeli construction workers looking to build some apartments. But let's not quibble.) Apparently Christ was a normal, earthly guy who had a kid named Judah with (who else?) Mary Magdalene. According to the director Jesus croaked as mortals will and his bones were stuffed into an ossuary and stashed along with those of his other family members, including his mother (no dormition for poor Mary then; just pedestrian decay like unto the great unwashed). I feel so...enlightened. Having observed this sentinal of celestial news, I await, lungs bursting, for the March-April covers of Newsweek and Time, which can be counted upon to annually discover headline-worthy new facts about the J-man. I'll buy them, along with the current issues of Cosmo, Glamour, and Lucky, and display them on a coffee table through the end of Pentacostarion. It's my quiet way of scorning those publications that call themselves serious and yet annually during the holiest time in Christendom pander to Common America's alleged yearning for the spiritual. What trash. Lucky knows its news: It's all shopping, all the time: the latest bags, bangles, dresses and cosmetics. Lucky does not stray in springtime from its frothy flacking of Euro-American bling to suddenly hold forth on Fashion Woes of Women in the Time of Our Saviour. Feh. It's enough to make me glad I shook the dust of the news industry off my sandals.