Getting Woke
I’m Dan Piraro, the creator of the Bizarro newspaper comic, and this is my weekly blog post. The large Sunday comic above is mine, as are all of the non-cartoon comments below.
Since January 2018, the Monday-Saturday Bizarro comics have been written and drawn by my comics partner, Wayno. For more fun, check out Wayno’s weekly blog post.
And here’s this week’s ANSWER KEY to my Sunday comic’s Secret Symbols.
It is Easter Sunday here in Mexico, maybe where you are, too. Never missing an opportunity to celebrate things, Mexicans celebrate Easter for several weeks.
Last week was Semana Santa (Holy Week), but the week before that, there were processions and other goings-on, too. I’m not sure if that week has a special name. Today is called Domingo de Pascua (Easter Sunday), and it marks the end of Semana Santa and the beginning of Easter week, the third in the series.
Unlike most other holidays here, Pascua does not include parties and parades. It is a more serious, reserved kind of religious holiday about church and family. Nor does it include giant, magical rabbits, egg hunts, or baskets full of candy.
Those are features of what is called “syncretism,” the combination of different religions, and are, in this case, exclusive to the US, Canada, and parts of Europe.
The big bunny and colored eggs are leftovers from ancient pagan rites of spring. Christianity tried to replace the pagan holiday with Easter, and mostly succeeded, but folks enjoyed the bunny and egg-hunt parts enough to keep those in the mix, though they had no obvious connection to the savior of the world returning from the dead.
Mexican Easter may not include those forms of syncretism, but it does employ the firing of small rockets that explode in the air and make a big boom. There are different theories for why they do this, but I suspect it is also a form of syncretism going back to before the Spanish Conquest.
In an effort to attract the attention of the gods, the Aztecs used to beat enormous drums that created a deafening sound as loud as thunder. I can’t help but wonder if the use of explosives here during pretty much all religious holidays is left over from that.
Olive Oyl and I are mostly used to this sporadic, year-round practice, but it often begins as early as 5 a.m., which can be alarming for tourists and other visitors. Giant bunnies and baskets of candy at Easter make no more logical sense than explosions, but at least they are quieter.
Since Mexico has incorporated various aspects of American Halloween into its Dia de Muertos holiday, it may not be long before Mexicans in bunny costumes will awaken us on Easter morning by marching down the streets banging gigantic drums. Time will tell.
The cat in my Sunday comic above has a quieter, if no less gentle, way of awakening its gods. It’s always something, I guess.
Time now to be awakened by the sound of our own chucklement at Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons from the week…
I’m a fan of Pug Rock from way back.
Unlike most people, I love being surrounded by the sound of cicadas. It drowns out my tinnitis.
My favorite white noise selection is called “Army of Cicadas.”
I can barely stand to be inside an airplane bathroom, so being in a submarine or a space capsule would be out of the question. Being in a submarine’s bathroom is about the worst thing I can imagine.
In Wayno’s blog post this week, he hastens to add that this cartoon was written, drawn, and submitted many weeks before the Sock Puppet in Chief flushed the US down the toilet in Iran. Neither of us thinks real wars are remotely humorous.
Jail is as scary to me as airplane bathrooms, so I have no humorous comments to add to this one.
That’s this week’s rude awakening, Jazz Pickles. If you are enchuckled by our weekly graphic shenanigans, please consider helping us keep these weekly adventures free of charge via the links below. We’ll thank you in our cartoon hearts.
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