Easter’s never been very high on my list of favorite holidays. It usually hovers around somewhere between Flag Day and San Diego Bike to Work Day.

It must be said that I’m not the religious type. Easter has largely escaped the efforts of the corporate culture to turn it into a godless, Christmas-esque occasion.

It seems that the only two companies to have made significant progress on this front are Paas and Cadbury’s. They would have us believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross and was resurrected three days later so that we can continue the pagan ritual of dying eggs and eat our weight in chocolate once a year. “Christ is risen. Eat this candy.”

The result of the Christian community’s rather successful defiance of commercialization is that those of us who have yet to be filled with the spirit are left wondering what all the fancy hats are about.

Upon the prompting of my roommate Lindsay, it was decided that I would look for some answers in St. Peter’s Cathedral right here in Exeter.

I got up at 8 a.m. Sunday, an unheard of hour for me on most weekends. I even spent an extra 10 minutes in bed, trying to determine whether or not I could get away with playing sick so I could sleep till noon like any decent college kid. I realized this was juvenile and that there was no way anyone would buy it, so I rolled my ass out of bed.

Twelve minutes later I was looking at myself in the mirror, wondering if “Thou shalt not weareth jeans and white sneakers to an Easter service, for it is an abomination” is one of the Ten Commandments. I had been to the cathedral several times prior to Easter, a couple times as a tourist, a couple times for research for a history class, once for the hell of it.

This time was different, though. I didn’t have to pay to get in, for one.

For two, the people populating the pews weren’t the pasty-legged, Bermuda-shorted, camera-toting types but little old ladies trying their best to outfashion the queen mum, old men who proudly limped to their seats on war wounded legs and children in bright pastels, some already chocolate stained, squirming restlessly on the knees of mothers and fathers who, in turn, were already offering prayers that the service would end before Junior or Sis began to wail.

We took our seats in folding chairs set up on the side of the walls.

I took to wondering how many people had been to this cathedral in its 700 year history to celebrate Easter.

My sense of wonder only increased as the organ and choir began to sing and the procession started towards the altar.

I felt small. Minute. Inconceivably tiny. For centuries, with few changes, this same ritual had taken place, and it may well continue to occur until the end of man.

And this was only at one church. How many thousands of celebrations would take place on this same day across the planet?

There I was, watching one service out a few hundred thousand taking place on an split second of a day in the whole of time.

Maybe it was the ghosts of the knights and damsels buried in the cathedral whispering to me or my adolescent immortality finally beginning to give way to a proper grown-up version of the world, but I was spooked.

The service started and brought me back down to earth (rather ironic, I thought). It all just seemed like church to me. It wasn’t as tedious as I remembered it, but perhaps that’s because I’m not 9 anymore.

At the end of the program, we walked out into the grounds. The sun was shining and the sky almost cloudless. “Somebody’s living right,” I thought.

We went home, and I made myself sick on chocolate.

Easter Monday is a bank holiday in the United Kingdom. Nobody has to work except for the soccer players, I guess. I can hear the screaming and the chants coming from the direction of the stadium.

The soccer hooligans have been making their presence felt on the European stage recently. Two supporters of an English side were murdered when they went to watch a match in Turkey.

When the Turkish team went to Leeds, there were some riots. And this is over a sport, not a little Cuban boy.

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Chris Crouch is a sophomore in political science from Rapids City, Ill.