Sacrilegious Sunday Heads to Creepatorium for an Alternative Form of Worship

If you’re looking for an alternative way to celebrate Easter this year, hop on over to Creepatorium for the fifth annual Sacrilegious Sunday on April 5.

While the day kicks off with a good old-fashioned Easter egg hunt, it diverges from all the traditional religious pageantry surrounding the Christian holiday — genuflecting, noshing on bits of “body,” sipping on “blood” — instead reframing it to worship thyself and embracing the accepting community that’s formed around the event over the past five years.

“The way we explain it is this is our own church,” says Creepatorium co-owner Emerald Boes.

The idea took shape when Boes and Presley Peach, Creep business partner and recovering Catholic, noticed a need for a gathering during the Passover period, especially for those who were raised religious and left the practice behind, for a variety of reasons, but enjoy being part of a like-minded tribe.

“Presley said, ‘I miss going somewhere and singing with people and holding hands and saying ‘hi’ to your neighbors,” Boes shares. “Our whole community and who we cater to is the alternative community, so there’s a lot of that, people who have left the church and don’t know how to find that.

“This is where we’re able to really reclaim that and practice what we want to preach, which is community and healing and being selfish,” she continues. “It’s not necessarily creating a religion, but reclaiming the power, the shame and the guilt that that has brought them.”

The theme this Sacrilegious Sunday is Heaven & Hell. Peach’s performance troupe, ConSensual Circus, and local metal GoGo burlesque group, Blassphemy, are sure to showcase glorious debauchery, so sin freely, fellow heathens. It’s going to be a devilish good time.

“It’s really cathartic for not only the audience but the performers as well,” Boes says. “There’s a lot of release and catharsis. We work closely with the performers to create a show that is truly rooted in healing and empowerment and taking all of the shame and the guilt away and rephrasing that.”

Preacher Peach is also starting the perverse Mass with a sermon — “communion” will consist of Jell-O shots — while Boes is planning a special ritual based on the Biblical story of Lilith, historically cast as a she-demon for demanding equality and refusing to be subordinate.

“What she wanted was not that crazy,” Boes says. “When I say ‘ritual’ and what mine look like, it’s really an interactive way to manifest or put intention into your life. This new age witchcraft is all about doing what feels right for your practice and your life, which is very much the whole theme of this event. Your energy that you put out is what you get back. The golden rule, if you will. Let’s change the world the way that we want to with the superpower of our minds.”

With a variety of alt vendors and artists, including Satanic Colorado, Sacrilegious Sunday also features interactive workshops, educational classes and creative stations. Plus, the Creep complex is the home of horror shop HORRID, Scr3am & Sugar Coffee Co. and Horrid Tattoo.

“As it feels like hell on earth these days with everything happening in our political climate and regular climate, the idea is most devils are people who were cast out or shunned, started as angels, fallen angels,” Boes explains.

“It’s not as much of a mockery, yes, we use some of that to make that point and to reclaim it, but it’s an alternative form of worship,” she concludes. “We want to create a space where people could be if they didn’t feel like that’s what they wanted to believe in.”

Sacrilegious Sunday: Easter Mass, 1 p.m. Sunday, April 5, Creepatorium, 1974 S Acoma St. Tickets are $52.