Why Dont You Blog?

It’s not easy to see Peter Hitchens - the personification of the Daily Mail mindset - as a devout Christian. But here he is, furious about the fact that betting shops can now open on Good Friday. The headline:

Our braying, Godless land where Easter is another day at the bookies

As opposed to “another day” in which a newspaper’s main headline contrives to add to the grief of the mother of a 15 year-old murdered girl, by implying that the fact that the girl drank alcohol was somehow a reason for the girl’s murder and therefore the mother’s fault? Good example of Christian charity, that paper? Oh, blow me down with a feather, is that the Daily Mail?

Pause to reflect on the meaning of “braying” in Hitchens’ headline. Can’t find one. Assume, uncharitably, that is must be there to make “godless” seem more threatening. As with the unusual capital letter on “Godless”.

I must confess to not knowing that bookies were previously closed at Easter, (not being a gambler) so I start from a bit of a disadvantage. Nonetheless, I can’t see what the opening hours of betting shops have to do with morality, at all. There might be (unconvincing to me) moral argument for banning betting but how can there be a moral argument for banning betting on certain days?

But it appears, according to the rabid one, that the new testament provides the justification:

……this is the first generation in centuries that does not know that the soldiers cast lots at the foot of the Cross, ignoring the groans of the crucified Jesus and the weeping of his mother, to decide which of them should have Christ’s seamless garment.

Betting makes the baby Jesus cry? But only at Easter?

Hitchens then argues that:

“paintings of the Crucifixion by the great Flemish Masters such as Hieronymus Bosch and you will see, baying or sneering at Golgotha, exactly the same snarling, contorted, heedless faces you find on the drunken streets of our country.”

What? I thought this was rant against betting on Good Friday, rather than against angry drunks. Is a bad-tempered drunk in the street somehow mocking the crucifixion? Is the (conceptual) guy putting a Five pound Yankee twist forecast on the fourth race at Cheltenham somehow responsible for another (mythical) guy betting on an old t-shirt 2000 years ago?

Falling for Hitchens’ usual rhetorical trick of arousing emotion by association of ideas, I confess that I now picture Hitchens as some sort of Bosch demon. I definitely picture him “snarling” at the keyboard as he types his column.

Oh, it turns out the cause of society’s ongoing tumble into the Pit isn’t gambling on the first “Sunday after the first fourteenth day of the moon (the Paschal Full Moon) that is on or after the ecclesiastical vernal equinox.” (Wikipedia) Nor is it people who look ugly when drunk in public. It’s single parents, according to the next few paragraphs.

This is actually what people such as me have been warning of for years, while being dismissed loftily as puritans and bigots and falsely described as believers in a past “golden age”.

Please let me join in the lofty dismissal. May I add ranting, fear-mongering, hate-spreading, self-satisfied, unable to present a halfway coherent argument?

He’s supposed to be a committed Anglican, according to his Wikipedia biography.

That’s “committed” used in a sense other than that which it has when it’s coupled with “should be”.

And that is “Anglican” used in a sense that is so unlike that brand of Christianity of Giles Fraser, the vicar of Putney, as to make you wonder if the Trades Descriptions Act might usefully be applied to religion.

Popularity: 26% [?]

Popularity: 26% [?]

The God channel, Euro version, is one of the delights that Virgin Media haven’t let fall off the list. It’s too easy a target but I’m not constrained by any rules of engagement here. The only other channel that managed to be simultaneously comic, mindnumbing and stomach-turning was the Fashion Channel and that seems to have gone.

Between the theologically incomprehensible Jewish Voice and the hypnotically tedious In Touch, presented by the pastor of some Atlanta Baptist Church, there is an awesome advert for an event for the Easter weekend, being held at Kingsway International Christian Centre (KICC.)

Massively oversized strongmen wearing tight Lycra patterned costumes. (I thought they were wearing US flags but that may be a false memory, caused by the traumatic effect of exposure to ten minutes of Jewish Voice.) Very garish stage and stage effects and loud music. You see them doing typical World’s Strongest Man feats - smashing through towers of breeze blocks with their bare hands and so on.

I am utterly baffled by the connection, here. Christian Centre & (unlikely to be 100% “natural”) Strong Men?

Except maybe it’s “These dudes could do some serious smiting. Beware godless hordes.”

Popularity: 20% [?]

Popularity: 20% [?]

This post was inspired by a cake I ate today. It was so miraculously kitsch it should have its own weblog. It wouldn’t fit on a scanner without serious damage to its hull integrity, So no picture.

You’ll have to imagine a birds’ net made of meringue, filled with cream and studded with fake bark made from shredded chocolate, interspersed with those tiny chocolate eggs that have a hard shell that’s patterned to look like the eggs of imaginary but colourful bird species.

This brought to mind the chocolate anatomically correct Jesus that offended Catholics.

Shouldn’t ornithologists be campaigning about this cake? Maybe, representing their most cherished idols in confectionery format is just water off a ducks’ back to ornithologists but I believe they should be warned.

Shameless Why Don’t You blog-promotion. This was last year’s Blog Easter message. I’ve posted the link in the absence of a currently working site-map or site search thanks to various upgrade attempts or the will to write a fresh Easter message for our faithful.

Popularity: 22% [?]

Popularity: 22% [?]

This has got to be one of the oddest but most welcome holidays.

Odd? It doesn’t have a set date. It’s something to do with phases of the moon, I believe. Who works it out? Every year, calendars tell us when Easter is. Who tells the calendar manufacturers? They could print all the diaries and Western calendars in the world by just working out the leap years and setting the length of February - making sure they remember the old “February has 28 days clear… etc saying” to work out how long the months are. They can easily set out the dates of Christmas and New Year and May Day. But when it comes to Easter and Whit and Pancake Tuesday and all those other days (sorry, Days) that depend on Easter - who tells them?

Also odd, because if it’s supposed to be the date of the crucifixion, then why not just set one, as has been done with Christmas? The obvious argument is that it’s the old spring festival and reflects the progress of the northern hemisphere’s yearly cycle. Which is obviously true and fair enough. But why doesn’t this apply to Christmas? It’s always a couple of days after the Winter equinox.

Welcome? Good Friday is the only bank holiday that’s on a Friday, which makes it seem particularly well-named as Good. All other bank holidays allow you to miss a work Monday, but there isn’t that much you can do on a Sunday that requires an extra lie-in on Monday. Bank holiday Mondays turn Tuesdays (so-so) into alternate Mondays (bad). Good Friday turns a Thursday (so-so) into a Friday (good) AND gives you an extra Saturday (excellent). And even gives you an extra Bank Holiday in the next week.

Even better, Easter comes at a time when you have to be clinically depressed not to feel some optimism relating to the next few months of warmer longer days, no need to wear overcoats and boots and tights (this is only an advantage if you’re a woman, normally). This year it was perfectly timed to match the first decent weather seen all year in the North of England.

More good things - even if you have 30 kids, nephews, nieces, friends’ kids, grandhildren and great-grandchildren to buy presents for, you can get them all an Easter egg and have change out of £40. Try doing that at Christmas.

(Buy them Cadbury’s Creme Egg multipacks and you’ll have change out of a tenner, but you have to be on the dole or a pensioner to get away with that, really. Even better, you can get those candy-coated little chocolate eggs that are speckled to look like real birds’ eggs. However giving one of those would probably be worse than just not giving anything. Ideally, you have to put a few in tissue paper in a fake bird’s nest made out of Flakes. )

And you don’t have to go round a million shops choosing things. If it’s chocolate and it’s even remotely oval* - it will do. They’ll not notice any difference after the first one or two anyway, and it’s ten to one they’ll vomit them all up within 3 hours of waking anyway.

Altogether, it’s hard to find anything bad to say about Easter as a holiday season. As a religious festival, it’s hard to say anything that won’t offend somebody in some way, so I won’t.

… Or not much anyway. This is a bit related to its religious side. The music is rubbish. Christmas has fantastic carols. Easter doesn’t have much in the way of songs. “There is a green hill far away” is about it. This has miraculous powers to bring tears to the eyes of any child who’s ever had to sing it in Assembly. However, set it against the full set of carols and Christmas wins hands down over Easter. But that’s probably the only thing its scoresheet is down on.

So, Happy Easter

* A Terry’s chocolate orange will do at a pinch. In fact, a box of chocolates is OK as well, unless it only has square ones, in which case it’s all nougat or toffees and NO ONE will thank you for it.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Popularity: 19% [?]