NO. HAM. at Easter!!

Don't get me wrong.  I heart the dead pig.  Enormously.  My love of bacon (and my unwillingness to lay it on the altar of discipline) is one thing that keeps me from formally being Muslim.

As we near Pesach (I get to go to a Queer seder this year!), I felt some porkly info might be relevant.

Ham for Easter?    Appalling.  Here's why.

After Al Andalus fell, the Christian Spanish took over that area.  Al Andalus had been a time and place in which Islam, Judaism and Christianity all lived together in harmony, fostering medical and other sciences (the first eye surgeries were done during this time), the arts, language (it's from this period that Hebrew was reinvented as a poetic language and not just a liturgical one) and even agriculture and watershedding.  Life flourished in Al Andalus; the architecture we have left from this period in the Iberian peninsula still has no parallel or peer.

So then the Christians get arrogant and uppity (it's a long story) and take it all over.  Wars, death, killing--all in the name of God.  God, who loves you and all humans so much that His servants will kill you if you aren't one of them.

Isabel and Ferdinand (oddly enough, mostly Isabel, but hey) come up with this great idea:  Let's get rid of all the Jews and Muslims, and take over!  We can kick them out, confiscate all their possessions--real estate, gold, money, everything--and really run things the right way, the way that God says!

So they did.

Jews and Muslims had a choice: get the fuck out, or convert to Christianity.  Many left, some didn't, not wanting to leave their histories homes, lives, families, careers.  Conversions occurred.  

So Easter--the Christian-adapted pagan (well, human) festival of Spring and renewal and rebirth comes around, and just to make sure that the folx who converted weren't blowing smoke up bums of the Christians, Isabel and Ferdinand declared a public feat day, ostensibly to celebrate Easter.

In case you don't know it, consuming pork is forbidden in kashuit (Jewish) and Muslim law.  So what did Izzy and Fred serve at this public feast day, to celebrate seasonal renewal and the resurrection of Christ at Easter?

Ham.  And one was made to eat it, in public, by way of proving that one's conversion was "real," that one would break with the laws of one's previous tradition and belief system, proving their Christianity.

Ham.  Dead pig.  Anathema to Muslims and Jews.  Ham.  Dirty, forbidden meat.  Ham.  The symbol of Christian control.  And if you didn't eat it, after a conversion, in public, on Easter, you were executed.  Ham or DIE.

The egg, I get, as a symbol of fertility and renewal.  Bunnies?  Sure!  They're profligate (but we won't talk about frequent sex or anything like that).  Lillies?  I get those too--flowers, blooming, new life, yeah.  But ham, at Easter?

Never again.  My family always had a ham at Easter; I thought it was just what everyone did.   But I had NO idea what it meant.  All those deaths, forced conversions, evictions, confiscations, loss of life and knowledge.

I admit: I still eat ham. But NEVER at Easter.