Why Easter is an inconvenient holiday for the secularists

Its a discussion that comes up every year, "Easter trading".

And there are a few token prosecutions every year for those who flout the regulations. Meaning of course there are government officials out there working on a holiday to catch out the violaters

It is all very silly really.

The big stores are closed for Christmas  and have a bonanza day the following day.

I bet they all do fairly well out of today as well. In fact the four days of the Easter holiday are probably amongst the more profitable of the year for most retailers, despite their doors being shut for two of them.

So whats the real issue?

I think it is this,  it  is almost impossible  to  obliterate the  religious overtones  surrounding Easter.

Christmas was secularized many moons ago. It is easy to pretend, if you so wish, that Christmas day,  has nothing to do with the Church, even though it was enshrined in law as a holiday because our forebears were Christian, nominally anyway.

Good Friday and Easter Sunday, received the same deference  in legislation  for the very same reason. In fact they are the two holiest days in the Christian calendar.

But there is a  problem here for the secularizers, Easter is a movable feast ⁽¹⁾.  The actual date that Easter falls in any year was defined by the Church at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD (or 325 CE for those readers who insist on the secularist rendering of dates).

The  prescription for finding the date for Easter in any year, given at Nicea, was that Easter Sunday falls on the Sunday on or after the first full moon following the vernal equinox.  The Vernal equinox being defined as falling the 21^st of March and that it had to follow the Jewish feast of Passover. 

The Bishops at Nicea used a solar calendar, the Julian Calendar.  However the Death and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ is tied to the Jewish Passover (which calculated according to the Jewish Lunar Calendar).  And we all know the Resurrection of Christ occurred after the Passover, hence the formula.

So the complexity of calculating when Easter falls results from tying a lunar calendar to a solar calendar and imposing that upon a 7 day week.

I mentioned in my previous post that the Eastern church will not be celebrating Easter for another five weeks. The reason for the diversion from the Western calculation is two fold.

The first one is that it still uses the Julian Calendar date for the 21^st of March in its calculation for the vernal equinox.  Astronomically the vernal equinox has moved from this date as reckoned by the Julian calendar, which led the Western Church, under Pope  Gregory to reform the calendar in the 16th century. A reform which keeps the vernal equinox more or else aligned to the 21^st of March.

The second reason is that under the formula given by the Bishops at Nicea Easter could not be celebrated before Passover. And Passover this year starts on the 20th of April.

But there is no getting around it, Easter is a religious holiday the date on which it falls defined by the Church and it does not follow the Gregorian calendar by which we all regulate our daily lives.

I am happy to celebrate Easter according to the prescription laid down by the bishops at Nicea, even though for the majority of the country  Easter has come and gone.

And I don't really care if some small retailer opens his doors on Good Friday, as recognized by our civil authorities.

What does matter is that we do not allow our Christian heritage to be airbrushed away.

And that is the real agenda of those who push for Easter trading.

Post inspired by: Freedom to shop

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(1) The British Parliament passed an act in 1928 that fixed Easter as the Sunday following the second Saturday of April.

A clause in this act however laid down provisions before it could come into force, one of which being consultation with relevant Church authorities.

And nobody has got around to doing that yet.

Comments

[Lucyna]

Andrei, I think you've hit the nail on the head judging by the lack of comments from the usual suspects.

[ropata]

Perhaps this post was too technical for them?

Although I'm not sure "airbrushing away our heritage" is the motivation for pushy Easter traders. I'd say a larger factor is the greed imperative: endless, unrestricted consumption of material goods. Pretty much the opposite of the sacrificial life and death of our Lord Jesus.

[peter]

There was the amusing warning in the Roman Catholic Phillipines.

Those self flagellating, and nailing themselves to crosses, have been advised to do so with caution.

Ha Ha Ha!!!

[ropata]

peter,
Jesus too was mocked, spit upon and misunderstood.

Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau;
Mock on, mock on; 'tis all in vain!
You throw the sand against the wind,
And the wind blows it back again.
And every sand becomes a gem
Reflected in the beams divine;
Blown back they blind the mocking eye,
But still in Israel's paths they shine.

The Atoms of Democritus
And Newton's Particles of Light
Are sands upon the Red Sea shore,
Where Israel's tents do shine so bright.

- - William Blake

[Danyl Mclauchlan]

Cheer up Andrei - a couple of thousand years ago there would have been plenty of grumpy pagans moaning about how all these upstart Christians were ruining the ancient traditions of the Spring Equinox and disrespecting their heritage by profaning the rituals of Eostar, the Earth Goddess.
So you're not the only person to go through this.

[andrei]

a couple of thousand years ago there would have been plenty of grumpy pagans moaning about how all these upstart Christians were ruining the ancient traditions of the Spring Equinox and disrespecting their heritage by profaning the rituals of Eostar, the Earth Goddess.

Ya reckon Danyl?
Or is Eostar a modern fabrication of those who dabble in the occult?

I think the latter, myself.

Easter or Pascha is quite clearly related to the Jewish Passover and has absolutely nothing to do with the Church usurping pagan festivals real or imaginary.

[imark]

When the Pharisees asked Jesus for a sign that he was the Messiah,
Christ responded "For as Jonas [Jonah] was three days & three nights in the whales belly;
so shall the Son of man be three days and nights in the heart of the earth' (Matt 12:40)
Christ discussed two important aspects here.
First, he mentions the Old Testemant account of Jonah.
Secondly , He indicates a definite time frame
Three days & three nights.
Because this was the only sign which Christ gave that
He was our Saviour,and because the whole world is deceived (Rev 12:9)
it should come as no surprise that Satan has deceived the scholars of this world
into doubting the validity of Jonah's story, as well as disbelieving the time frame
involved in Christ's death, burial and resurrection.

Traditional Christianity has long believed that Christ was buried on the afternoon of Good Friday
and resurrected early Sunday morning

even though this is an obvious disagreement with Christs own words.

The good Friday Easter Sunday observance is not based on on God's word, rather on the traditions of of Men

[peter]

iMark

I am intrigued by these words attributed to Jesus Christ:

"For as Jonas [Jonah] was three days & three nights in the whales belly;
so shall the Son of man be three days and nights in the heart of the earth' (Matt 12:40)

Yes it does blow the Good Friday/Easter Sunday out of the water rather, doesn't it!!

Except for one thing. Jonah did not spend 3 days inside the whales stomach, because it would have been impossible to survive there.

Seems like it was setting a legend to catch a legend. Or maybe Jesus' little joke which it most likely was. Who ever said Jesus had no sense of humour?

[george]

So, we now have a dilemma. Do we believe the words of peter, whose life changing comments tag this blogsite; Or do we believe Jesus, the Christ?

Send replies on a postcard.

[peter]

George

Perhaps you could lead off by telling us whether you believe Christ was unserviceable for 2 days or 3 days?

[george]

Neither. Christ has never been 'unserviceable'.

It is us.

[peter]

George

You must admit that there were 2 or 3 days there where Jesus Christ did keep a very low profile!!!

If he was not dead for that period, what is the meaning of the Resurrection???

Ha Ha Ha !!!

[Danyl Mclauchlan]

Or is Eostar a modern fabrication of those who dabble in the occult?

I think the latter, myself.

Easter or Pascha is quite clearly related to the Jewish Passover and has absolutely nothing to do with the Church usurping pagan festivals real or imaginary.

"Eostur-monath has a name which is now translated Paschal month, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance."

Bede
De Ratione Temporum, 725 AD

[george]

Peter, it is written. "three days and three nights". No arguement.

Then he rose again, from the dead, with the promise and proof of what he was saying was the truth.

So consider the prospect of life my friend. Or that of eternal judgement, when your guffawing will not be so ready.

Why let some embitterment condemn you?

[andrei]

Danyl,

Your quote from the Venerable Bede suggests that he believed that the Anglo-Saxons at one time venerated a Goddess called "Eostre".

She had long disappeared by his time, if indeed she ever existed. since some months were named after Gods and Goddesses it could have been pure conjecture on his part that she was once worshiped as a goddess.

Apart from Bede's reference to this goddess what else is there to suggest she ever was worshiped or what form this worship took?

The Anglo-Saxons where an obscure people at the edge of the known world at the time Bede was writing, I do believe he was Anglo-Saxon himself though.

Pascha of course had been celebrated according to the formula given in the post for about 500 years before Bede wrote of the goddess.

You will have to do better than that.

[Danyl Mclauchlan]

She had long disappeared by his time, if indeed she ever existed. since some months were named after Gods and Goddesses it could have been pure conjecture on his part that she was once worshiped as a goddess.

Right . . . so do you have any special reason to fancy that Bede simply made up the name of this God and its relationship to Easter, other than you really want it to be true because otherwise I've made you look like a bit of a twit?

[Danyl Mclauchlan]

Or is Eostar a modern fabrication of those who dabble in the occult?

Incidentally, I'm always amused when people who drink the blood of the murdered God born of a virgin tut-tut about 'dabbling in the occult'.

[andrei]

Right . . . so do you have any special reason to fancy that Bede simply made up the name of this God and its relationship to Easter, other than you really want it to be true because otherwise I've made you look like a bit of a twit?

Danyl nobody is denying that the Anglo-Saxons had a month in their lunar calendar called Eostar and that this month more or less co-incided with the Month we now call April or that in the ENGLISH language the Feast of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ is called Easter as a result.

The correct word is PASCHA which is the Hellenized form of Pesah the Jewish passover and was in use before the Anglo Saxons even existed as a distinct people and certainly before they inhabited the British Isles.

In French: Pâques

In Spanish: Pascua

Pascha is most definitely tied to the Jewish passover not some obscure presumed Goddess of an obscure people who were not even recorded in history until well after the events in the Gospel occurred.

[peter]

George says:

"Peter, it is written. "three days and three nights". No arguement"

So do some counting for me. How many days from Good Friday to Eostar Sunday?