I've never actually been a practicing Christian. Easter's always had a more religious context for me - it's someone else's holiday, and yet the entire world closes down for it or does x and y approved activity. Alienating eh? When you add in the implications of the whole passion play and the call to genocide from the book of Matthew, it's definitely a holiday I resent like hell.

I agree that it doesn't have the same secular impact as Christmas simply because a holiday where all they can really sell is chocolate, two months after another chocolate holiday, is not going to be as big a deal as a four month long orgasm of mass consumerism.

So Easter means to me now pretty much what it's always meant; a day when I feel like I don't fit in, when most places are closed and the places which are open are packed full of people.