I was going to write this post last week, on the curiously named ‘Good Friday’ holiday. But what with one thing and another time slipped away from me and I decided not to. But then I read my friend Anthony’s latest blog post and decided that I would write about Good Friday and Easter after all.
On Friday I thought about Easter and the whole reason for this national holiday. Jesus died today, I thought to myself, but that thought was quickly followed by the question, Did he really?
The Christian faith believes he did, and that’s why we have this holiday which I am not about to complain about. But as I allowed this train of thought to continue I wondered to myself, how come Jesus always dies on Friday? How come Good Friday never falls on, say, a Monday or a Wednesday. Aside the obvious confusion it would cause to celebrate Good Friday on a Monday I couldn’t think of another reason that seemed to fit.
Christmas day has fallen like a drunkard all over the calendar. One year it’s on a Monday, next a Tuesday, then every so often we have a leap year and that sends it all over the place again. Christmas does, however, always fall on December 25th, meaning that we don’t get to call it something like ‘Really Good Saturday.’
So how come then that Good Friday always has to be a Friday? If it’s a day that commemorates the death of Jesus Christ then why don’t Christians pick a date and stick to it rather like they did with Christmas?
Another thing. Why do we give each other chocolate eggs? Was Jesus a chocaholic? And why an egg? Would it not be more symbolic to give each other a chocolate cross or a big chocolate nail rather like the one the Romans used to nail the poor guy to the cross? Granted, on the Sunday Christians celebrate his resurrection, so maybe perhaps the egg could be seen as symbolic of ‘new life’, but where did the bunnies come from?
I made a mental note to pay some attention to this the next time I sat in front of the alter of Google, but alas like nearly all mental notes that I make, I forgot.
However, on Sunday Romy gave Jeffrey and I an easter egg each. That was sweet of her, but then she explained that easter is a pagan festival “hijacked by the Christians” she claimed. Something to do with the goddess of fertility called Estre? I may have that all wrong of course (doubtless some clever person will correct me), but it got me to thinking about how many Christian festivals have been mixed with pagan festivals. I just learned last Christmas that the Christmas tree is actually some pagan thing too and that Jesus was actually born sometime in our summer?!
I have no problem with Christianity hijacking pagan festivals of course. Dubiously naming the day your saviour was murdered as ‘Good Friday’ seems a little odd, but I’ll let that one go on account of the chocolate that I get on Easter Sunday.
In the name of equality and fairness though I would like to see a few Muslim holidays injected into our Calendar. Not the miserable ones where you can’t eat nice food, but the ones where you can stuff your face and have the day off work too. As with the festival of Estre we could rename some Muslim festivals. For example Ramadan could be renamed Ramitdown in celebration of all the food we get to ram down our our throats! It could have all kinds of commercial benefits. I’m sure restaurants would love an festival like that.
There has to be a few Hindu things we can celebrate with days off work too right? We could have Cow Day where we all eat beef or something. Heck, let the Christians hijack all the festivals they want, if it gets everyone a day off work then I’m all for it.
In the meantime I’m wondering where all the Pagan extremists are. Surely they must be a little upset at the Christians for re-branding all their festivals and celebrations?
Make no mistake, I wouldn’t want to encourage any more hatred in the world but such re-branding of sacred festivals has to be worthy of some kind of Pagan retribution, say a drive by fruiting of a church or something? Heaven forbid that anyone should exercise religious tolerance!
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A Glimpse into the History of Easter Candy
Wrote the following comment on Apr 14, 2007 at 4:19 am
You’re right about Christianity *hijacking* the Pagan festivals. Back around the 100 + years after Christ, as Christianity began to spread, Christians used whatever elements of the Pagan festivals they could to help explain similar things from the Gospel.
As the Northern Hemisphere Spring Equinox festival (New Life and all that etc) happens to fall around the same time as the traditional Jewish Passover Festival…which is when Jesus died…. this eventually got merged into what we know as Easter today with both the Pagan and the Christian symbols still intact.
And Jesus died on a Friday. It was the Friday before the Passover Festival sometime around the year AD 35 or 36. He was killed before sundown so that the Sabbath (what we know as Saturday) could be kept “pure” for the Passover Festival.
Setting the dates for Easter is pretty complicated :) It’s to do with the moon and the Gregorian calendar and stuff. https://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/easter.html
There is a whole bunch of other stuff about the symbolism of Jesus dying on that particular day and such but I’ll leave it at that.
:)
Mitch
Wrote the following comment on Apr 14, 2007 at 4:31 am
PS – don’t quote me on those year dates btw… its all a bit screwy and hard to pin down exactly all that stuff about Christ and calendar dates. It could easily have been around AD 29 or 30 or anywhere in between. I don’t know for sure.
Wrote the following comment on Apr 14, 2007 at 9:18 pm
“Ramitdown”
You do make me laugh Simon xxx
Wrote the following comment on Apr 14, 2007 at 11:20 pm
ramitdown… haha… in america everyday is ramitdown day!
and the marlboro man…(heavy sigh) i have no words.
Wrote the following comment on Apr 15, 2007 at 2:58 am
Michelle is right about why Good Friday is actually always on a Friday and that they choose the date due when the first new moon was after something or other. That is why it is sometimes in March and sometimes in April. I think this may have been because the date wasn’t recorded at the time – but don’t quote me on that! I prefer it in April myself, spreads things out in the year nicely for me, but I don’t think they’ll take any notice from me about defining it to a specific date.
I like the chocolate eggs – and managed to get a nice English one even though I’m not in England. The bunnies, though… I’m completely confused about them!
Wrote the following comment on Apr 15, 2007 at 3:19 am
Good Friday falls on a Friday so that God can come back to life on the third day, a Sunday, his glory day.
The chocolate thing though… we didn’t have that in Ecuador. I think it got linked to Easter so that Americans could have a holiday in April. (I don’t know which other countries celebrate it this way). However, I certainly won’t refute a holiday in which I get to eat solid chocolate eggs… but I will never connect it to the rebirth of my Savior. ^_^
Wrote the following comment on Apr 15, 2007 at 1:06 pm
“Not the miserable ones where you can’t eat nice food, but the ones where you can stuff your face and have the day off work too.”
I about laughed my ass off when I read this as well as “Ramitdown.” As a large man I truly enjoy those chocolate eggs and holiday feasts. Here’s one for you. Back in the ’90’s when I worked in the prison system here in Texas I was afforded a day off for, all of things, “Confederate Heroes Day.” I’m not a supporter of the South and their agenda of slavery, but I thought it a strange having a day off to commemorate these fallen heroes.
Wrote the following comment on Apr 16, 2007 at 11:02 am
And today is Patriots day. A holiday in parts of New England.
Wrote the following comment on Apr 16, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Calling it “Easter” was a holdover from European spring holidays. Here’s what Wikipedia says:
“The English name, “Easter”, and the German, “Ostern”, derive from the name of a putative Germanic Goddess of the Dawn (thus, of spring, as the dawn of the year) – called Ä’aster, Ä’astre, and Ä’ostre, in various dialects of Old English. In England, the annual festive time in her honor was in the “Month of Easter” or Ä’ostur-monath, equivalent to April/Aprili”
Wrote the following comment on Apr 18, 2007 at 1:54 am
Our Christian holidays are why Witnesses do not celebrate holidays or birthdays. They are all from pagen rituals.
Wrote the following comment on Apr 25, 2007 at 9:09 am
hi simon
I thought your post was really interesting, I have often thought about this, I kinda particularly as I went to christian primary school, by my parents choosing. I had an experience (some call it a exstensial moment), I was 7 and we used to have assemblies in the morning, one day the teacher at the front was talking about jesus and parting the waves, y’know, and I was thinking if everyone is believeing this and no-one thought it can’t be true, then my reality is just a dream, I just looked away at the window to outside as I physcologically believed that it was a dream for a while.
Anyway I haven’t seen this blog before and I thought that, simon, if you think like this I am glad to have found this blog as you sound like the type of person, who likes to think deep and I admire that in people.
My friend told me about the main beltane festival this year in edinburgh but I don’t think i can go, but I think the main pagan festivals should be celebrated.
It is like when they did the census or kind of census I think it was 3 or 4 yrs ago and they was a murmur going round that if 25,000 people wrote on their form, that there religion was jedi, then jedi would be a official religion of the state, so why has nobody seen a jedi holiday ever ?
I worked once in a sandwich shop and I worked with two malaysian guys, and in their country they had 3 different religious holidays, y’know for 3different religions. they told me they would have about 5-10 off every month for religious holidays.
perharps the government know this and is the reason nothing will change, as they will see it as lazyness.
Wrote the following comment on Apr 25, 2007 at 11:09 am
Well Sam, the catholic school didn’t have too much affect on you you’ll be pleased to learn. It was Moses who parted the waves, not Jesus :-)
And as for Jedi holidays, I don’t even know if Jedi’s have holidays!
But thanks for swinging by. Stick around and join in someother posts why don’t you.
Wrote the following comment on Apr 26, 2007 at 5:10 am
You’re right. Pagan celebrations have been rebranded by Christians. Include Haloween. It’s originally a Pagan celebration called Samhain. Christmas is really called Yule, celebrated every 22nd of December.
-An ye harm none, do what ye will. –
Wrote the following comment on Apr 28, 2007 at 11:45 am
Good article. Yeah you’re right about Christians purloining Pagan festivals, but many religions have taken the bits they liked from other religions. I think it’s called syncratism or something like that, I’m doing a religious studies degree…but I’m also not learning very hard.
I don’t know whether any of the previous comments mentioned this, but the Goddess of the Easter festival is called Oestre, (I believe that’s the correct spelling) she’s the Goddess of fertility and possibly where the word Oestrogen comes from. Spring is a good time for Easter because it’s the time when animals are all making babies, aw.
I’ve also noticed that Christians never really have a Saturday as a special day do they? They’ve got Mourn Day Thursday (or however you spell it) Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Easter Monday?, Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday…
There’s nothing on a Saturday…must be because it’s the real day of rest. I mean, even Jesus didn’t do anything on the Saturday, and he could have, if he’d come back from the dead a day early. He probably spent the day thinking it over
“Should I really go back there dad? I mean, they did bloody kill me!”
“Trust me son, after this they’ll really believe in you.”
“And this is going to end all suffering on earth and bring about a mortal paradise in which mankind can live together in tolerance peace and harmony until Judgement day?”
“Errr……..yes.”
Wrote the following comment on Apr 29, 2007 at 1:59 am
It does rather make one a little suspicious of religion though, to know they’ve been ‘mixed-n-matched’ to the extent they appear to have been.
One thing I am curious about though… above Samantha says that Christians celebrate Haloween. I’m assuming she doesn’t mean the rather silly ‘anti-haloween’ parties that a few select, and dare I say anal, churches throw? So in that case, how exactly do Christians celebrate Haloween?
Wrote the following comment on Apr 29, 2007 at 8:39 am
November the 1st is All Saints Day on the Christian Calendar. The night before – aka October 31st was “All-Hallows Even” which got shortened over time to Halloween.
But anyway… its not really a big deal. :)
As for the mix-n-match religion thingy well even Paul did that when he was mixing it with the Greeks. He noted that the Pantheon loving Greeks had a monument erected to “The Unknown God”. Paul used this as a way to explain the Gospel to them thus converting many Greeks to Christianity.
Christian Missionaries have always attempted to proclaim the Gospel to people in terms they can understand using iconography and symbology they are familiar with. Where the “pagan” elements have not impacted too much on the Message, they were kept and integrated into the seasons we know in the Church across the world today.
None of this has ANY bearing on ones faith. No Religion, tradition, practise or whatever impacts on Faith. That comes from another source entirely :) So it doesn’t really matter in the long run if you “celebrate” Christmas, Easter, Halloween or whatever… none of it means a twat if its in the human expression that you put your Faith. :)
Wrote the following comment on Apr 29, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Yeah, if only that were universally accepted. If everyone was more “That’s what you believe is it? How nice.” and less “Believe in what I do or die you bastard.” then the world could be a whole lot nicer.
When people believe in something, truely, then it’s really true to them. I guess it must be hard then, if you believe that everyone who doesn’t believe the same as you is going to burn for all time. I mean, nice people wouldn’t want other people to burn forever. So they try and convert you to their side. But really, you can’t convert someone unless they want you to, so people should sit back, relax, and realize that an all loving God would not, ever ever ever, sentance billions of people to eternal suffering just because they didn’t believe in the exact right religion.
I mean, eternal suffering under the hands of Satan both proves that God can’t be all loving or all powerful. If he is all powerful, then that means he’s working WITH Satan and is perfectly alright with Satan’s whole ‘evil’ motif. Which is just weird…
Let’s all become Pagans!
Wrote the following comment on Apr 29, 2007 at 7:23 pm
So Michelle, in fairness then Haloween wasn’t something that the Christians stole or converted into their own thing, it was already theres. In fact, it seems ironic to me that Haloween might in actual fact be the only bonified genuine Christian holiday?
As for Jacks response, you know this is something I have been wondering a lot recently. If God is love, as Christians always tell us, then how come he is so utterly condemning of those who follow faithfully the beliefs of another religion, and indeed a religion that may well believe in the very same God (ie, Islam).
God can’t be love if he is going to save just the white western people and not the Indians, Arabs, Russians, Chinese, etc. It seems like an entirely unGodly thing for him to condemn millions and millions and millions of faithful people to hell just because they weren’t born in a place that would likely guide them in a direction of the Christian faith.
Wrote the following comment on Apr 29, 2007 at 11:09 pm
It does seem ridiculous, some people aren’t born in a Christian orientated area. And so the Christians then decided that therefore it would a good plan to go around converting the heathen and forcing the poor bastards to wear clothes and stop being ‘savage’.
It’s ridiculous the levels of narrow minded stubborness that is so prevelent in the members of The Big 3 religions. The childish fingers in the ears “la la la la” that many of them have when you try and discuss some points of their faith.
The world is around 4,000 years old. We’re all incest ridden sinners that descended from two people, dinosaurs are the practical joke of the universe, evolution is for sissies…
One can always overlook the percieved ignorance of the people who believe scientifically contradictory things, science isn’t always right and they are allowed their opinions. What can’t really be overlooked is the levels of pure hatred spewing out of the mouths of some religious people. The sheer bile that they vent towards people of different colours, creeds, sexualities, gender…the mass hatred for almost every living thing on this planet and a love for the Big Guy that’s supposed to have created everything.
That’d be like going to an artist you admire, putting a big smile on your face and saying “Gee your work is shit, I love you!”