Is Good Friday a Holiday Where You Live?
Dakini
Veteran
Hello, gang. I was surprised to wake up this morning and discover that today's a holiday, librariesand banks are closed, etc. The state where I live is a mainly Catholic state, being predominantly Hispanic. I don't recall Good Friday ever being a business holiday anywhere else I've lived. I seriously doubt it's a Federal holiday (separation of church and state, you know), so it must be up to each individual state to decide whether they want to give people a day off or not. But a business I called in another state (Utah, maybe it's a Mormon thing) was also closed.
So I just wanted to check in with the New Buddhist world, to see if this is a holiday where our members live, wherever that may be. I don't mind Christmas being a holiday, because that's become as much of a general cultural thing in the West as a religious holiday. But shutting down business because of Good Friday has thrown me for a loop. I'm not sure if I should write my state legislators and ask for a day off for Buddha's birthday, or something, lol. It seems odd.
Comments
Not a state holiday in Alaska, not in New Mexico. Not in New York either, but the bleeping stock exchange is closed anyway.
Good Friday is a General Holiday in Alberta.
Public holiday nationwide in Australia
It certainly is in Australia. Everything shuts down!
We have it off here in Ontario, Canada too.
I don't mind the day off and can use it to celebrate the new year as spring is just being sprung here.
Not a public holiday in the lower 48, but schools are on "spring Break" around here and some non-gov institutions are kicking it.
Guess they're all gearing up for the big egg hunt at the White House and elsewhere.
I also understand some folks are actually doing some sort of religious thing today (Friday) and Sunday. (OOPS!) It is a very serious time for some of the Christians, big time serious.
As for you Aussies, hope you kick back and take those holidays where you can get them. I bet those grills are firing up big time.
Peace to all
Yes in UK, Good Friday is a public holiday to celebrate the funeral of Baby Jesus (PBUH) - don't worry just like the terminator, 'he'll be back'.
...And every single shop that I can see, is open. In spite of it apparently being a holiday.... The Post Office is closed though.... But the banks are open, as is every single other financial venture that I can see....
I can't get the quote function to work. Is it on holiday, too?
@Fosdick I'm in NM, and it's a state holiday, here. All the state offices are closed, and the libraries closed at 1:00 pm. But you mention the Stock Exchange, yeah, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Why would they be closed if it's not a state holiday in New York? I'm still gathering documents to submit my income tax returns, and the brokerage office I tried to call was closed.
@lobster Friday is to celebrate Jesus' funeral? Was that a joke, or is that what Good Friday is about? Don't pull my leg, because I'm totally uninformed about this stuff, I'll take you seriously. So Sunday is to celebrate the Resurrection, but Friday is to celebrate his funeral? Really??
Do you mean, the day he came down of the cross and was entombed?
edit: hmm.... I guess it's a holiday for whatever businesses want to give their employees a day off for religious observance. I remember my dad's employer ages ago gave their people the day off. He said they chose not to honor Martin Luther King Day (hard to believe), but they decided to offer Good Friday as a holiday instead. Still, NM is giving state employees at least a half day off.
The weird thing is Christians always say he rose after 3 days. But from Friday to Sunday is 2 days right?
They say "On the third day, he rose again". So if Fri. is Day 1, Saturday is Day 2, Day 3 would be Sunday. Do we know what time of day he was taken down from the cross, on Friday? I think I remember hearing/reading something about how the Jewish calendar goes from evening to the next evening, or certain holidays do, so "Friday" would actually start on Thursday night, or something. Is Friday Passover? If so, it begins on Thursday evening, and I think that's when Jesus was taken down from the cross. The event coincided with Passover, IIRC.
Yes, exactly. It's central to the Christian faith that Jesus had to die for Humanity's sins. Substitutional atonement. Sadistic if you ask me.
All I know is that when I was working, it wasn't an official holiday that you got off work for. Nothing seems to stop anyhoo around here, at least.
I give not of my brother to save me from sin
If I miss the mark, I guess I won't win.
@Dakini .... on Good Friday, the Holy Mutton/lamb of God is crucified according to God the Fathers mysterious ways. This painful torture/execution can take up to three days. From what we know Jesus was on the cross for six hours. When taken down, he was still alive as fluid pumped out from his lungs when he was pierced by a spear as a test.
Jesus the man was then 'entombed', 'guarded' by no doubt bribed soldiers. 'Miraculously' still alive. He was so drained and depleted that he was unrecognised by senior disciples/friends. Jesus talks to disciples and then wisely dissapears into anonymity or dies for real ...
The rest is history and stories told to Easter Bunnies.
However the dharmakaya of Boddhisatvah Christ is still powerful Christian magick ...
Christ will be descending from clouds shortly [still waiting ...]
@Walker I've never understood what that meant, or how it worked. Jesus had to die for humanity's sins. I don't get it. Does it mean by killing him, everyone got to start with a clean slate? They were liberated from their bad karma?
Did it refer to everyone alive at his time, or everyone thenceforward (including everyone who's ever lived since Jesus), and everyone in the past?
Does it mean that because Jesus died for everyone's sins, that everyone automatically gets pie in the sky when they die, because Jesus took on all their sins?
Did it mean he took on everyone's sins that they'd committed up to his death, but after that, they were on their own, and responsible for the consequences of their actions? Or does it mean that for the rest of the lives of everyone alive at that time, Jesus was their sin sponge, so they could do no wrong?
I have no idea what it means. Maybe it refers to some kind of animal sacrifice ritual they used to do, kind of like the Tibetan Scapegoat ritual dance?
@Dakini I have no idea of how the whole thing is supposed to work either. Press a devout Christian on the concept, and they'll probably spout something about how we can't possibly comprehend God's ways. Doesn't seem much different than the Pagan sacrificial practices they like to mock.
Everyday's a Chocolate day (sacred) where I live
But in answer to the question ...Yes like Oz, in NZ Friday is a public chocolate holiday and so is Chocolate Monday, but Saturday's a normal day ( I worked this morning-but I still ate chocolate
) ....
Anyway.... whose this Jesus guy and what's he got to do with chocolate ? Did he work at Willy Wonka's factory ?
Not a holiday here in MN, at least not on a state level. but the kids are off school. Even my college kid who was on spring break last week, has 4 days off. But they don't call it Easter. it's just "break" lol
Except the cadbury's and Reese's eggs, I don't like the Easter season at all. I don't even like the typical foods. It is one holiday I would be completely fine skipping entirely.
I was told at the grocery store this evening that everyone in northern NM gets at least a half-day off, if not a full day, because there's a tradition hundreds of years old in the Hispanic community of people making a pilgrimage to an old church that is believed to be the site of miracles. So everyone gets off early to start the 2-day walk, or however long it takes them. I don't know if there are similar traditions and miraculous churches in other parts of the state.
Penal substitution is just one theory. The orthodox theory is more mature, it revolves around 'God became man so that man might become god." Since God took on the human form, humans can also now partake of the divine nature. That's the whole basis of incarnation (from start to finish), not just the crucifixion part. It is not about dying for sins, it is about infusing the human nature with divine nature so that even the fallen man could rise to sacred heights.
Time to sip that hot cocoa.
@techie Thank you! That makes sense. It's actually kind of inspiring.
I've never heard it explained that way, though. By "orthodox theory", do you mean the understanding of the eastern Orthodox Church? They have such an interesting take on a lot of things.
@Dakini - sorry, my bad on New Mexico - I had done a quick search and Good Friday wasn't listed as a state holiday on the site consulted. I thought it might be, since there are a lot of Catholics there.
This is an adaptation of a really old pre-pagan idea - the blood of the first man had to be shed in order for the world to continue. I've forgotten the details, alas - I think there is a reasonably good run-down on it in Karen Armstrong's book, A Short History of Myth. A more familiar example might be the one-time craze for human sacrifice in South and Central America - for the sun to rise, the crops to grow, the rains to come, etc etc, human blood had to be shed.
I think one of the reasons Christianity was so successful is that it adopted a bunch of Pagan ideas early on, making it very easy for Pagans to make the switch. The simple teachings of Jesus wouldn't cut it, apparently.
As a Federal employee....No, didn't have it off....Good Friday. I worked all day yesterday, which I agree with. Keep all religion out of Fed business. Why should tax-payers pay people to stay at home to love Jesus extra on any given day? My vote no. We don't have that kind of money in the budget and frankly, it's not a need. Anyway...Don't get me started...
Schools were out on Spring Break here, too.
I live in the Bible Belt, so Easter weekend is a full on Holiday. Dressing to the alls......huge dinner.....Service all day. Huuuuuuuge hats at church, hahaha....baskets, egg hunts...you name it....Everything was opened, though. The real stuff is on Sunday, for people around here.
Nothing going on at my house. Another day....
Thanks @Lionduck - BBQ chicken and lamb yum yum
_ /\ _
Ironically, those pagan ideas now appear to be becoming a liability, and may be partly responsible for the decline in church membership in the United States. As we collectively become more "up spectrum" - more rational - in our thinking, these ideas seem to make less and less sense.
Yes, I mean eastern orthodox (I think it was St. Athanasius who uttered the now famous quote), because most people today associate Christianity with the evangelical or charismatic kind. So my point is, there is great beauty in Christianity provided we look in the right places. And also on topic, Good Friday is a holiday in my country too.
Christians see the ancient pagans as having an inkling of Christ's coming, which would explain their sacrifices etc. They see this longing as common to all humanity, a longing which is eventually fulfilled in Christ. As I said before, Christianity is a beautiful and complicated religion and a simplistic explanation (such as they adopted pagan ideas etc.) will not do.
"You can take the Pagan out of the Christian but you can't take Paganism out of Christianity !"
@techie Thanks, again. May I pick your brain further? What longing is common to all humanity; the longing for an incarnated god? Or for a savior? Or for an incarnated Divine person to show them the Way?
They did adopt some pagan ways, and scheduled their holidays on the days of pagan holidays, but they also evolved their own beliefs and theories relating to all that. But part of the problem is that not all followers get the kind of elegant, moving and sensible explanations that some of the Orthodox priests and followers like yourself offer. Something gets lost in the translation between the different "brands" of Christianity.
For example, I came upon an interesting video on youtube by someone in the Eastern Orthodox Church, maybe he was Russian. And it was all about how Jesus wasn't the Son of God, he WAS God. He was God incarnate. And he came to Earth as a human in order to be able to relate to humans as an equal, more or less, one-on-one, which he couldn't do, otherwise. Something like that. Well, that's a VERY different take on Jesus than we get elsewhere. The way it was explained, it made perfect sense. It really got my attention.
edit: Aha! I found it. Here it is. Happy Easter, all!
I will explain this differently. Let's consider the Hindus. They believe in incarnation of the gods, that gods take human form and live on earth. Why did they come up with such ideas? A Christian will say it is because the hindus (and other pagans by extension) must have had an inkling of what is to come (namely the Christ incarnation), but since they did not possess the right knowledge they ascribed this incarnation idea to their respective gods. In short, a Christian believes that the hindu idea of incarnation, or any pagan idea for that matter, is simply a foretelling of Christ. A non-Christian, otoh, will look at it and conclude that Christians simply appropriated the idea of incarnation from pagans.
Reg. the confusion between God and son of God, even EO church believes that Christ is the son of God. The trinity is the basis - Father, Son, Holy Spirit. But since son of God is the same as God, this EO priest must have emphasized the God aspect. Here son is not the same as human son, it simply means even though the son is also God he is different from the Father who is also God. In other words, there are three distinct persons (father, son, spirit), but they are all ONE God. So calling Christ either son of God or simply God would amount to the same thing because son refers to the specific person of the trinity (who is God anyway).
@techie Oh, thanks. Well, you can see his explanation yourself, as I just found it and posted it. Yes, he does emphasize the God aspect, and it's fascinating. He says that with the various "sinners" Jesus encountered, it was God forgiving them. There's something about that, that seems more powerful than saying "Jesus forgives you" or "Jesus loves you", as some people do.
And my next question was going to be about how the God = Jesus thing affects the understanding of the Trinity, but you anticipated my question. So the 3 elements of the Trinity are God + spin-offs of God = 1 God. Got it, I think.
So, could you explain the Holy Ghost/Holy Spirit concept, in the Orthodox tradition? Thanks.
quoth @techie:
Quite so, I concede the point. The devil - or God, if you prefer - is in the details. Primitive beliefs were merely the clay from which later beliefs were shaped, creating traditions which were new, and yet, strangely, the same.
@Fosdick Yes, new-and-improved, perhaps, yet strangely the same. I was really struck upon learning of the spring Bear Ceremony that Japan's Ainu and some Siberian tribes performed in the old days. A bear cub is taken from his cave in the Autumn, as he's getting groggy and ready to hibernate. He's kept in a cage in the center of the village, or by someone's home, and fattened up. In the Spring, there's a big sacrificial ceremony, the bear is killed, the whole village shares in the feast, and it's believed that the Bear, who is a Holy Spirit, rises up to Heaven, from where he spends Eternity watching over the tribe, as its guardian. And the tribal members all firmly believe that they are kin with the Bear; there's mythology that informs them that they're descendants of a mother Bear. "Proof" of this is the fact that both bears and humans can birth twins.
Any part of that sound familiar? And by coincidence, Jesus was said to have a twin brother.
Sure it will as that is precisely what happened. It is easier to convert people that way. Eoster (today) was hijacked from the fertility goddess. What, did you think bunnies and eggs represented Jesus?
The crusades were brutal and there was nothing beautiful about how people were bent to rule.
The Holy Trinity: God, Jesus the Son, The father, and The Holy Spirit = The Sacred Love that flows between them and to those blessed by the Grace of God.
I thought the holy trinity was Amen-Ra, Horus (the son of Ra) and the Eye of Ra (the sun).
Both of those new kids on the block are a bit different from the original Trimurti (Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu) that form Brahman.
Yes.
God the Bunny
Jesus the Egg
and chocolate the Holy Ghost ...
He is risen! I think he was bread that way.
Just been listening to our local Church bells. How wonderful ...
Time for a musical interlude ...
Yes, that's correct, in EO (and even in RC to some extent) God is Love. So if God incarnates, it is Love that incarnates. The whole life and death of Jesus is seen in this context. Evangelicals see it as a legalistic matter, that is, God paying the due for man's sin (and since the wages of sin is death, God has to take a human form in order to die). But the orthodox see the incarnation as an expression of love, not a legalistic matter.
Christ is a healer, not a judge. His incarnation is becoming one with humanity so he could heal them. It is not about seeing humans as sinners, it is about seeing humans as victims in need of healing and empathy. It is not about God saving man from Himself (which is absurd), it is about God imputing his divine nature into humanity, making all things new again. So yes, it is radically different from the popular notion.
Trinity is lover (Father) and beloved (Son) and the love (Spirit) between them. If we say God is love, that love has to have a recipient somewhere. If we say God loves the world, does that mean God wasn't Love before creation? So God is seen as three persons, else the idea 'God is love' will make little sense.
Yes, people do bad things in the name of religion, that's been going on for quite some time. It is unfortunate. It may be true that some pagan practices were co-opted to appeal to the masses, but it doesn't mean the whole theology was simply a modification of pagan doctrines (which were so diverse and vast at that time). So the logical conclusion is, theology and philosophy were pretty original whereas some cultural aspects were 'borrowed' to appeal to the masses.
I think some of those do bad things and then use religion as an excuse....
Fixed /pedant mode off
Well, those practices were (and still are) so diverse because "pagan" is a derogatory term some Christians used meaning anyone that isn't of the three Abrahamic belief systems. It was a way to de-humanize and generalize many different people at once.
Now there are people that identify as Pagan but they didn't come about until the 1800s and are a Celtic branch.
I'm not saying the theology isn't original but when it comes to God walking the Earth as man, Jesus is the relatively new kid on the block.
Some Hindus believe he is an avatar of Vishnu as well as Buddha. Buddha being after Krishna and Jesus after Buddha.
But I'm sorry, I have no idea how I got so off topic from the blasphemy of celebrating the execution of a great teacher.
Celebrating his birth I understand as his message is how he lived but I don't see the logic behind the whole dying for our sins stuff.
As a personal matter, I think it is a bad idea to let someone else die for your sins.
Why waste a perfectly good sin?
It's not so much the sin, but what you do with it....
Here, in the Bible Belt, all I know is that God the creator of everything, is in heaven waiting for me to accept Jesus Christ into my heart, as my lord and savior, so that I can be forgiven of all all my sins and walk in the kingdom of God when I perish, as long as I follow the word of God as it is in the bible and put all my trust and faith Into the word of God and his promise of eternal life.
Good Friday is still one of my favorite holidays. My family has a fish fry, I get to see all my cousins and we have a great time although this year we didn't do much.
Today, I just turned down my moms offer to go to church. I honestly wouldn't mind going just to make her happy but I just don't feel like watching the reinactmemt of Jesus being resurected again. Church on Easter Sunday is so dramatic and I'm going to be way too cynical so I figured I'd stay home. I dont believe the hype and it's uncomfortable when you don't. Still trying to figure out what I'm going to tell the grand parents when they ask how was church.... You can't just tell your 92 year old granny you didn't go to church on easter Sunday.... You just can't lol
@morningstar -- If you can perturb a 92-year-old granny with anything, I imagine she has not put her good experiences and skills to good use.
Thanks @Morningstar and @genkaku for bringing a bit of humor to the thread. It was a big deal - Easter Sunday having grown up in the Episcopal church with my two older half-brothers being acolytes and the whole 9 yards. But, lucky for me, my mom was tolerant and loving of all her brothers and sisters (as an aside). The most memorable Easter Sunday for me, was when we all came back from church and I was alone in the dining room and I put my prayer book on the telephone desk and read the bookmark with Jesus knocking on the door and the verses about asking him into your heart - which I did. I put my palm frond down (a real live - sort of) palm frond, still had my hat and gloves on and I grasped that bookmark in both hands, looked up at the corner of the ceiling (which now is pretty funny, btw) and earnestly asked Jesus into my heart!
I think it's a harmless belief, when I think about it now, anyway. And now, I'm a unofficial Buddhist!
@genkaku not really perturbed, more like distressed for the soul of her beloved grandchild lol. Old folks are set in their ways and beliefs and I'm not going to be the one to kick up dust today. Lol she once told me that the only thing she hasn't done is die. She's the most kind hearted person I've ever met and I've seen few put use to their days in the ways she has. Like I said, it's still the Bible Belt. Her grandmother was An Indian. I really wish I could have known her religious practices before the family went full Christian. And honestly, she may not say anything at all.... I could be placing my fears onto her. Who knows. To