Easter charade

The longer I think about it, the more convinced I become that Easter originated as an invention by historical admin types to “improve” our life quality.

Think about it …

We’re talking about one of the most important religious celebrations / holidays of the year (except perhaps in North America where John Oliver summed Easter up best by referring to it as “shitty Christmas”) and we can’t even figure out when it is. Depending on, of all things, the moon, Easter can fall anywhere between March 22nd and April 25th in any given year.

(This relatively large timespan makes Jesus Christ fairly unusual among famous historical figures. For many such figures, we know the day on which they died (because they had become famous by then), but often don’t know when they were born (because they weren’t yet). Take Shakespeare for example. Assuming that he was not Francis Bacon (or anyone else other than Shakespeare), we know that he died on April 23rd, 1616. But, the most we know about the other side of the life of arguably the greatest writer in the English language is that he was baptized on April 26th, 1564. Another good example is William of Ockham, who died on April 9th, 1347. The most parsimonious thing that we can say about his birth, however, is that he was probably born in 1287 and probably in the British village of Ockham. (My all-time personal favourite though is Plato. According to Wikipedia, he was born sometime between 428 and 423 BC (either that or it was one hell of a labour for his poor mother), but died more politely, if still unusually slowly, from 348 to 347 BC. (Seneca helpfully claims that Plato died on his birthday, but unhelpfully doesn’t happen to mention what day that might have been.))

But with Jesus, it’s the exact opposite. We know precisely on which day and at what time he was born, but he dies on a different day from one year to the next. Huh?)

Anyway. Now where was I?

For me personally, whether holiday or celebration, I simply find Easter to be a logistical nightmare because it hops around more than the bunny it’s come to be associated with. Some years, I can ignore Easter entirely and just enjoy the four-day long weekend it brings. (Sort of. Throughout Germany, there is a ban on dancing on Good Friday. Like Easter itself, there is no standard here and the ban can be as short as part of Good Friday only (Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg) or extend all the way from 4 AM on Maundy Thursday (the day before Good Friday) to 4 PM on Easter Sunday (Rhineland-Palatinate). I can sort of understand this. The crucifixion of the son of God is not really an occasion for partying, now is it? What I can’t understand is why it’s largely restricted to dancing (meaning that going to a bar and getting drunk is probably ok or at least legal), why only Hamburg also extends the ban to moving house, and why the government has to legislate what in the end amounts to religious decorum. If you feel that dancing on Good Friday is inappropriate, then simply don’t dance. You really don’t need the government to back you up on this.) But, when Easter falls mid (to late) like it does this year, it can hop its the way into the start of teaching for the German summer semester, which is fixed for the middle of April.

For instance, the first day of classes this year falls on Easter Monday, except that that’s a holiday in Germany, so it doesn’t and gets pushed back onto the Tuesday. The week before that, when we usually hold all the organizational meetings for the different classes, are the provincial Easter holidays so those meetings kind of fall flat too and have to be done during the course instead.

Ok. Annoying but not really a nightmare. The latter only starts because of some knock-on effects that chew away even more teaching time. Probably unbeknownst to most North Americans, there are more than a few additional, associated holidays starting 40 days after Easter: Ascension Day, Whit Monday, and Corpus Christi. As such, exactly when they occur depends on when Easter falls in that year; however, they all fall squarely in the summer semester regardless of what Easter decides to do.

The beauty of Ascension Day (or Jesus Skydrive if you translate the German Christi Himmelfahrt literally) and Corpus Christi is that they always fall on Thursdays, meaning that they tend to take out the following Fridays too because one can never have enough Easter-related, four-day long weekends. On top of this, Ascension Day in Germany doubles up as Father’s Day, with many people, fathers or otherwise, completely forgetting the religious significance of the day and instead using the opportunity to get ripe royally ripped and making the subsequent long weekend more or less predestined, if not a necessity. Although it has nothing to do with Easter, add in the first of May (May Day; same principle as Father’s Day, just boozier) and the chaos is more or less complete.

Although I’ve learned to avoid holding classes on Thursdays or Fridays in the summer semester, my Monday course takes a very variable beating from year to year. Best-case scenario is Whit Monday unavoidably chewing away one class. This year, however, Easter Monday and May Day come on top of that. Missing just three classes might not sound like a lot, but that’s a little more than one-fifth of the 14 that there are in total. That’s quite a chunk of material to not be covering and makes it difficult to ensure that the course is consistent from year to year.

As it turns out, most of this is completely unnecessary because Jesus does indeed conform to most famous historical figures insofar as the date of his death has been pretty well nailed down to either April 7th, 30 AD or April 3rd, 33 AD (unsurprisingly, both Fridays) and probably at about 3 PM. Instead, much less is agreed upon about the time of his birth. The consensus of most scholars is that he was born sometime between 6 BC and 4 BC, but the exact date, the month, and even the season remain contested.

So, despite the latter uncertainty, let’s agree to keep Christmas as it is and split the difference and fix Easter as April 5th of each year. Or even the Friday closest to the 5th. It’s still late enough to wreak havoc with my teaching, but at least it’s consistent havoc and I see that as a step up.