Just a Jew on Easter

Being Jewish I have a very interesting perspective on a lot of non-Jewish holidays. So today is Easter - which of course was a Passover meal - though now Easter dinner is celebrated with the least kosher thing imaginable - ham. Funny how that all works out. So why ham? Lamb would be more traditional; the Sicilian tradition is baby lamb - Abbacchio.

Ham seems to show contempt for the Jewish practice of abstaining from pork - so I went searching for the reason ham is eaten on Easter. No one seemed to know on-line either. I found one explanation dating back to ancient Romans. Apparently the Roman's buried pork near the sea to ensure salty, cured meat by spring, which was eaten - you guessed it around Easter. I found this doubly ironic since Jesus was a Jew a religion forbidding you to eat pork - (The carcasses of every beast which divideth hoof and is not cloven footed nor cheweth the cud, are unclean to you: every one that toucheth them shall be unclean." ~ Leviticus 11:26) and the Romans who killed Jesus and then they took a Roman tradition to celebrate the holiday.

Then I found a simple explanation from a Butcher - For serving at home Ham is not only tasty, Its easy to cook. "It comes pre-glazed or pre-flavored. You basically heat and serve," said Joseph J. Terrazzano, owner of Haverhill Beef Co. in Boston.

Then I found what my paranoid delusions wanted to read – I found this: “And those families who, by customs, eat ham on Easter Sunday are, unwittingly, following an old practice of the Roman Catholics of England, who ate a gammon of bacon on Easter to show their contempt for the Jews, to whom pork is forbidden.” [Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., Volume 7] (Since I wouldn’t believe it either – I decided to cite it.) So there you go. The history of the Easter Ham. Every family that unwittingly ate ham tonight is guilty of anti-Semitism. Of course me doing the " I killed your lord dance" probably is just offensive enough to make up for it.