More on Easter

 

Music

We can be grateful that radio stations and retail music systems haven't given us three months of Easter music in the run-up to the holiday. It would be pretty much Peter Cottontail or Handel's Messiah.

Needing a set of tunes to fill the house while preparing our portion of a fine Easter dinner at Mike and Lynn's, I put together this playlist.

Name	Artist
Helter Skelter	U2
Silver And Gold	U2
Pride (In The Name Of Love)	U2
When Love Comes To Town	U2
The Wanderer	U2
Walk On	U2
Sunday Bloody Sunday	U2
Bad	U2
One	U2
O Mary Don't You Weep	Bruce Springsteen & The Sessions Band
Jacob's Ladder	Bruce Springsteen & The Sessions Band

Who says that this Easter?

The relationship between the Protestant churches and the early church is, as Facebook would suggest, complicated.

Not only is Easter a movable feast, not fixed to a date on the secular calendar, but there are different ways that the Eastern and Western churches determine the date. All trace their formulas to  the decision of the Council of Nicea in 325. The meeting notes from that council haven't survived, so the calculations are left to the reader. The major points of contention and imprecision are described pretty well in Wikipedia.

So how is it that most Protestant denominations appear to accept the Roman church's designation that a) Easter should happen on a Sunday and b) independently from Passover, upon which the Easter stories are based? (A few Christian groups, such as the Seventh-Day Adventists and Worldwide Church of God, have different views about Easter observances.)  The quarrels among Christians seems less about the conclusion - when and how Easter should be observed - than about who makes the decision. Lutherans can observe Easter today not because the Bishop of Rome says so, but because they arrived at the same conclusion without being told.

Of course, we're reached the point that it's not likely that any major denomination is going to devote time and energy revisiting the fixation of the dates for Easter, or Christmas, for that matter. There's plenty to do with the way things are.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Best Laid Eggs of Mice Nor Men"][/caption]

 

Wither the funnies of Sunday

Most of the time, I favor the present and future over the past. I think that, overall, we are making things better for ourselves and for the next generations. You can call me naïve, but I won't answer. We've eradicated diseases, brought freedom to more people in more places, and even reduced the amount of violence in the world. In spite of what you might hear from political campaigns or from the pulpit, life is getting much better for many more.

So, why, for all of our great wisdom and talent, have the Sunday funny pages become a cruel mockery of past glories?

Here's what you get now:

[caption id="attachment_3368" align="alignnone" width="225" caption="Boston Sunday Globe - 1 Apr 2012 (click to enbiggen)"][/caption]

Here's what you got in April 1970 (via Whirled of Kelly - Play Ball!)

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="220" caption="Pogo full-page Sunday comic - 5 Apr 1970 (click to enbiggen)"][/caption]

It wasn't just Walt Kelly's great talent for writing and drawing that made these strips so stunning. The newspapers published them, giving over a whole page to a single comic. The papers had to pay good money to do this. The papers of old made money by believing that the public were worthy of this rich nectar. The papers of new are surprised that modern readers don't savor comics made of high-fructose corn syrup.