Letters to the President #1172: 'Enter Easter'

Reporter's Note: President Obama has gone to great pains to make it clear that he is Christian, despite persistent, false rumors that he is not. I go to great pains to write a letter to him every day.

Dear Mr. President,

We’re getting ready for Easter around our house, although I must admit that does not involve as much work as it did when our girls were small. Back then the process was a fairly exhausting spin on the gerbil wheel of putting up decorations, dying eggs, getting out baskets, buying new clothes, preparing for special breakfasts and dinners, and on and on and on it went. By Easter morning, the girls were hunting eggs and we were just praying that we could stay awake through church. Ha!

These days it’s not nearly so involved. Now we get to relax a good bit even though we still decorate, dye eggs, go to church, and do lots of other things to mark the day.

I would think in your job it would be very easy for any holiday, especially a religious one, to sneak up on you. After all, you’re plenty busy and must spend a lot of time dealing with matters which don’t even have a tangential connection to the workaday world: budgets, foreign affairs, legislative items, judicial issues.

I work a lot and I suppose my job is pretty demanding according to most people’s standards, but I don’t like it when duties press so much that I lose track of “life as we know it.” I’ve always felt that to be an effective reporter, you need to have at least some innate understanding of what you’re covering; to wit, it is hard to report on neighborhoods, schools, families, and churches, if you never have any time to be part of a neighborhood, school, family, or church.

I mean this in the most general sense. I wouldn’t say, for example, that only a basketball player should report on a basketball game. But I would think that a basic knowledge of athletics…what they feel like, what they involve, how they are enjoyed…would be a tremendous asset.

So, in other words, if you have not had time to think about Easter so far, you might want to make a little time over the next couple of days. Maybe you can buy a card, or help put up some decorations. Because if you want to stay connected with the people of this country, it is worth noting that that is what a great many of them are doing right now.

Hope all is well.

Regards,
Tom