The Bishop of Swansea and Brecon, writing in the “Diocesan Quarterly Leaflet,” makes a vigorous attack on the movements for securing a fixed Easter and a uniform month of twenty-eight days.
“Some good people,” he says, “have decided that it is bad for us to enjoy even the small excitement which comes from discovering for ourselves each year when Easter falls. We are to be coerced by law to observe Easter every year on the same date. We are indeed in danger of being legislated out of all sense, if not out of existence. The reign of the cranks is everywhere to be substituted for the rule of the Saints.
“Already a fresh grievance has been discovered in the fact that all our months are not of precisely the same number of days. A league has, of course, been formed in America to remove this outrage, and every month is to be ‘like February.’ Even Leap Year offends and ‘must go,’ and we are offered in its place ‘Leap Day’ on June 29th. If anybody still finds a superfluous day knocking around this is to be chained down to Dec. 29th and to be known as Year Day. Christmas must always be on a Monday, and the degradation of washing day shall cease out of the land!
“If this kind of thing prevails we shall surely only need one date to cover all the 365 days of the year, and that a prevailing April 1st.
“After all, why this passion for a dead level of uniformity? God made a world of infinite variety, while man devotes his whole energies to reducing human existence to a deadly monotony.
“There is nothing impious about the suggestion of a fixed Easter, but there is much that is infinitely silly. The demand seems largely to proceed from the golf links and ‘business circles.’
“No one suggests that a single created being is any the more likely to remember his Redeemer on a fixed Good Friday than when the date varies. No one professes to believe that a fixed Easter Day will draw any lapsed worshippers from the ranks of the professional week-enders. These are not the kind of considerations which appeal to the members of the ‘International Fixed Calendar League.’ If, however, we have any regard for the honor of our God these must be the things which to us will chiefly matter.” the Bishop writes.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
