Yes it is. I know what you’re thinking. You have kids, grandkids, and they’re gonna wanna do it. You can still buy the stuff. It’s cheap.

You’re thinking about coloring eggs to hide (not really hide), so they can find them and put them in those expensive baskets full of the fake plastic green grass … aren’t you? Sure you are. You did it when you were a kid, every night before Easter morning. You all got around the kitchen table so if you spilled any of that dye it wouldn’t stain your Easter dress or your buck shoes.

Well, here we are, faced with uncertainty. I won’t elaborate on the various kinds of uncertainty, nobody wants to hear news that bad on Easter. Easter of course isn’t just about eggs, the coloring of them, the price or the lack of them. You remember that if you’re a Christian and all the many faces of that name (there are so many that I don’t have enough pages left in my college diary to note them all).

Fans of my column know all about me. I’ve written tirelessly about the magic brick and stone walls of the convent across the street where I was born, the young and old sisters who kept it raked in the fall, trimmed in the spring and summer, and watched our Christmas trees light up in the early darkness of those days.

You know I’m what remains of the tiny Catholic boy from South St. Louis’ Catholic heart and soul, and Sister Rosanna’s tearful tale of how Jesus, the Christ, threw off the robes of the dead and appeared to the much put-upon Mary Magdalene, who, according to those who revered her, traveled about Jerusalem with the “holier” followers of Jesus as he preached to the stunned and captivated crowds.

The sisters who taught me all about Jesus in kindergarten never mentioned Mary. Of course not. The Bible doesn’t ever speak much of her, but the great artists of history placed her at the table at the Last Supper and at the crucifixion. Look at that art sometime. Early news hinted that she was a “lady of the evening” and a “sinner.” And the idea that she was a reformed prostitute was, eventually, completely erased.

My mother and sisters hadn’t any calendars hanging in our kitchen featuring this Mary, but there was one real big moment for which she was famous, according to Sister Rosanna. Mary, and Mary alone, was the first to see Jesus when he arose from the departed. It is written that “Jesus loved her unconditionally.” And that he loved her for who she was, and not for her beauty. OK.

So what happened to Mary of Magdala? The Christian Bible doesn’t much get into that. But it suggests she “preached the gospel, possibly in Ephesus with St. John,” (aha) and later lived in solitude in France. April in Paris, a great way to go.

France. Yes, which gives literature freedom to conjure endless histories to explore.

So while you’re coloring your Easter eggs, take a moment for Mary of Magdala, who embraced Jesus and gave us Easter.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.