https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06643a.htm
Good Friday, called Feria VI in Parasceve in the Roman Missal, he hagia kai megale paraskeue (the Holy and Great Friday) in the Greek Liturgy, Holy Friday in Romance Languages, Charfreitag (Sorrowful Friday) in German, is the English designation of Friday in Holy Week — that is, the Friday on which the Church keeps the anniversary of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
The origin of the term Good is not clear. Some say it is from "God's Friday" (Gottes Freitag); others maintain that it is from the German Gute Freitag, and not specially English. Sometimes, too, the day was called Long Friday by the Anglo-Saxons; so today in Denmark.
I should also add that Friday retains its pagan vestiges, named after Frigg in the German pantheon, or Venus, the Roman deity of erotic love, beauty and fertility, better known to some as Aphrodite. And likewise, April is a month that was long known as sacred to Aphrodite/Venus in the Roman Calendar, and many feasts such as the Veneralia were celebrated during April.
It is no coincidence that on Good Friday, Christ redeemed the world; since He is the Bridegroom and the Church is his holy, unblemished bride, it is the day of consummation: the consummation of His sacrifice on the Cross, the day He poured out His Precious Blood for us, and many theologians mark this event also as the seeds or birth of the Church, along with Pentecost.
So I'd say that Good Friday is best Friday. And the fact that it's in April is really cool. And once I heard the university shooting up fireworks on the evening of Good Friday. I'll be planning on the Stations of the Cross at 3pm. Seeya there!
This is SEO slop.
The discrepancy between "Holy Week" and "Good Friday" always irked me when I learned these terms in English.
Like many folk etymologies, it sounds like it's not quite right, but it was intuitive at the time...
For "the Christian message" the death of Christ is the ultimate good thing. According to Christianity his death brings everyone's salvation, not the resurrection. This is my body which is given for you.
Sad so many Catholic churches fail at actually sharing that message.
> Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life! [1]
It’s sung about a hundred times in Pascha (Easter) liturgy, so _very_ well emphasized in the eastern traditions.
Though in eastern churches the emphasis was less on a juridical understanding of the passion wherein Christ fulfilled a legal requirement. Rather it’s more emphasized that Christ’s very nature destroys death by taking on death. That mental framework always appealed to me more. The early Egyptian (Coptic) church father Athanasius [2] was pivotal in refining the philosophical concept [3]. Athanasius was also the first recorded to record the full list of the 27 books of the New Testament.
1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paschal_troparion 2: https://www.copticchurch.net/pdf/theology/incarnation_st_ath... 3: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasius_of_Alexandria
Im german it is Karfreitag (Karfriday) btw. and the whole week, Karwoche (Kar week). And that means sadness. Lamenting.
Some article ascribed it to superstition about a previous crash that had happened on some previous Good Friday, but debunked there being any connection.
This is a weird article. If you bail early, at least now you know the answer to the question.
In Germany its known as "brücketag" because Thursday was a public holiday and people take a "bridge-day" on Friday to extend the weekend.
Good Friday is also still very significant in its religious purpose here, so calling it "bridge day", even if it applied, would be disrespectful.
(Which doesn't keep the racing/modding community from having their own "Car Freitag" on that day...)
Although Thursday was a regional commemoration day (Gründonnerstag), it wasn't a public holiday, so most people still worked.
Still great to have a short break from work! Not arguing against it at all, it just seems a bit bizarre to me overall.
There's no serious academic support for a connection between the Christian holiday of Easter and the Mesopotamian goddess Inanna/Ishtar. The religious practices, beliefs, and festivals associated with Inanna bear no resemblance superficial or otherwise to Easter. They differ entirely in form, function, and meaning.
The only myth from that tradition that bears a remote resemblance is Inanna’s descent into the underworld: she's stripped of her powers, confronts her sister Ereshkigal, is executed, and later resurrected. It’s a compelling narrative, and yes, there's a resurrection motif but it serves a totally different purpose. It was a cosmological myth, tied to the movement of Venus in the night sky, not a theological cornerstone or community wide festival.
Inanna's rituals were centered on themes like war, sexuality, and divine kingship. Easter, by contrast, is about death and rebirth in a very different theological context. The comparison isn’t apples to oranges, it’s apples to machine learning models.
Also worth noting that the whole "Easter sounds like Ishtar" thing is shaky at best. The similarity is phonetically weak, especially when you consider historical pronunciations. Plus, "Ishtar" isn't even the most common or original name for the goddess Inanna (Sumerian) and Astarte (Phoenician/Canaanite) were more widespread depending on the period and region.
The connection between Easter and Ishtar is a modern myth. It s based more on a coincidence in English phonetics than on anything rooted in actual history or comparative religion.
Esther should have been contemporarily famous and renowned, several millennia B.C.; let's just ignore and forget Esther???
And thus, Ishtar Ruins Easter: https://youtu.be/Qd-wvVNEfNk?si=oJqkKALfn4xBX-zb
By the time of the first Nicea ecumenical council, Christians argued against using the Jewish calendar as by the 300s, it dated Passover before the spring equinox. The early church was now the official religion of the Roman Empire who followed the solar calendar.
In other words Easter and Passover has always been associated with Spring.
The Eostre connection is unconvincing. Eostre is a Saxon goddess with earliest sources about her cult from 8th century and:
- Easter has been celebrated before 8th century.
- And it has been celebrated by people that have never heard of Saxons or their gods.
This is an oft-repeated canard for which there is basically no evidence. In particular, there's no evidence for "easter bunnies" prior to 17th century protestant Germany, who then brought it to the US, when they migrated to Pennsylvania (ie: The Pennsylvania Dutch). Those aspects of the celebration aren't Christian or pagan, they're secular things that people do because it's fun for the kids, and that has always been the case.
When it comes to the name, the name isn't anything similar in for example Nordic languages:
Påske (Norwegian, Danish) or påsk (Swedish). Finnish seems to have a similar sounding name. Same with Dutch.
German has Ostern, but I the few others I checked were completely different.
That means even the name similarity only exist in a few languages.
And at the time the Christian celebration of Easter started these languages didn't even exist. The closest language I could find to early Christian history on DeepL was Greek and in Greek the name of Easter seems to be Πάσχ.
With that, this idea should be debunked sufficiently I think.
I guess the bunny still got something similar to the Coke-branding that Santa got to help product sales, but for chocolate sales instead!?
I retract the 'rabbits' part of what I said, but I still think it's ultimately a fairly weird taken-over/hybrid-mythology festival! I'm only able to talk about Easter as I know it in Aus though!.. I totally acknowledge festivals and their timing/meaning are very different in other places.
What it does state is in agreement with the wikipedia article on the connection between Ēostre and rabbits, namely:
The earliest evidence for the Easter Hare (Osterhase) was recorded in south-west Germany in 1678 by the professor of medicine Georg Franck von Franckenau
This is the earliest still extant written account of folk practices that had been occurring for some indeterminant time.
We are aware that the brewing of beer predates by many centuries, millenia even, the earliest still extant written account of the practice of brewing beer.
That being said, the actual etymology for Easter is from the month of April in the anglo-saxon calendar: Ēosturmōnaþ. Easter of course is a name for the entire season of Easter (up until Pentecost), which lasts a bit over a month and usually coincides with Ēosturmōnaþ.
But fittingly, Easter etymologically comes from the Proto-Indo-European word for 'Dawn', symbolizing literally the East, from which the sun rises. The Indian name Usha literally comes from the same word, and would directly translate into Easter.
The first mention of Eostre as a goddess is post-Christianity, by Bede. He writes:
> Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated "Paschal month", and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance
Edit - also Passover is Pesach in Hebrew. So Pesach -> Pascha in Greek, then onwards to other languages. Or just "Great Day" (which finishes off Great and Holy week which is what the week leading up to Easter is in most languages).
Christmas is the most obvious one (what does a bearded dude on the north pole have to do with the birth of Jesus? For Germans specifically: The "Christkind" is Baby Jesus, but its also a kind of spirit of its own who brings presents, and for some reason usually depicted as a girl?)
But you also have a similar thing for Carnival: Traditionally, it's the last feast before Lent (where Lent is also an expanded narrative of Easter!). But there are also all kinds of local narratives layered on top of it, like the Rhineland "Session", which begins in November, is somewhat awkwardly interrupted by Christmas and ends with Carnival as its sort of "grand finale".
And then Easter has the triple narrative as the death and ascension of Jesus, the feast after the end of Lent (so a bit like Islam's Eid al Fitr) and the beginning of spring.
In some way, it reminds me of the sprawling lore and extended universes/fan canons around Star Wars or other Scifi or Fantasy franchises, except on a much, much larger scale. I think it's all pretty fun.
So Lent is not an "expanded narrative of Easter"; it's a period of preparation, prayer, self-denial and almsgiving; it represents the 40 years' wandering in the wilderness that the Jews endured, and the 40 days in the desert when Christ was tempted by Satan. So it's distinct from the Easter celebrations.
Carnival is not a "Christian feast". Carnival is an umbrella term for various secular celebrations. But indeed, this has roots in Jewish traditions.
What the Jews will typically do in preparation for Pesach is to cleanse the home of all forbidden leavening and unkosher food: chametz. And this is sometimes done in a quite ritualistic fashion, and the children are involved, and it's like a scavenger hunt (and may have some cultural exchange with Easter Egg hunts) where the adults may challenge the kids to find every crumb of chametz and collect it and present it to the head of household. Then the chametz is destroyed, or sold or traded to a Gentile.
And so Carnival (folk etymology may consist of "farewell to meat [carne, vale]") is a festival where people are eating up the leftover meat that they've stored up. "Mardi Gras", "Fat Tuesday", and "Pancake Tuesday" is where they're using up the remaining fat to make pancakes. The Byzantines have elaborate fasting/abstinence rules which preclude the use of oils and butter and many things for certain periods. And this reflects prior Western traditions. Abstinence from meat used to stretch for all of Lent, not just Fridays. And so, Carnival was one of those cycles where you prepared for Lent (itself a preparation) because Lent was going to be the "lean months" before the springtime feasting.
And of course Carnival also took on the carousing and drinking and licentiousness of fertility rites; why not all that. If you were eating meat then you probably had some good wines or booze to go with it?
But Carnival has never been a Christian sort of religious or liturgical feast or season. Carnival coincides with Ordinary Time these days, or "Sundays after Epiphany" in the old General Roman Calendar of 1960. But Church authorities and Canon Law did not specify any particular methods for eating up our stores of flesh meat, or getting it on and flashing boobs on Bourbon Street.
Well, that is a good example to see how those things develop. Martin Luther didn't like how saints were praised and tried to convince people to pray to Christ instead of Saint Nicolas. Which then Catholic reaches formed to the Christkind.
(And then later Coca Cola took over spreading Santa Clause in their style)
Wait, tell me more about this? I've never heard of it but this sounds much more similar to what is practiced by eastern christians. Where there is also a 40 day fast before christmas, then the twelve day feast ending with epiphany/theophany. And in those branches lent itself is preceded by a 3-week period of increasingly strict fast. So in some years depending on when easter lands you can start fasting again very shortly after christmas ends but is still understood as a completely separate thing.
I don't know anything about the rhineland one but I could see how this could eventually mutate into one super long fast with a break for christmas, but also maybe isn't seen that way by the people doing it.
You might find it odd that Christians think they came up with Easter (or Christmas, or the Epiphany...) though.
But the name is striking to Santa Claus which is just a Anglo version of that name. Interesting is also that half of Germany the Christ baby brings the presents or the Weihnachtsmann. The Weihnachtsmann is what we would refer as Santa. But Santa and Nikolaus are depicted the same. There some other festivals like Jule from Scandinavia etc. But compared to Christmas we at least know that the end of Jesus (or whoever it was) happened at that time due to too many religions and groups in the city. When he was born and how old he even was…
Edit: Also the fact that the holiday follows the moon calendar because it was the Sunday after the Paschal full moon. Which is celebrated by the Jewish as Passover.
For most of history, Christianity is a mediterranean religion. There would be no reason to choose to put it at a time for Northern Europeans.
For example, I am the descendants of the indigenous Christians of India. The historical celebration of Christmas is called Denha, which is the native name for Epiphany, for which there is widespread textual evidence (corroborated by similar celebrations elsewhere), and which was celebrated at the usual time (Jan 6). There are numerous councils of the Church of the east that confirm this as well. Why would they possibly care what Scandinavia did. The simple truth is that this is a really old time to celebrate the birth of Christ, for reasons lost to history. Unlikely that the Northern Europeans, who were catechized many centuries after Christ played a large role in it. We have records of the date in Asian church councils well before the Northern Europeans were even contacted people.
The reason why Northern European traditions (trees, santa claus, snow, etc) became popular is due to the migration of Northern Europeans to America which is today synonymous with 'Christian' nations. even in Europe, the indigenous Catholics of South Europe don't always celebrate in this way.
But there are universals: sweets, gift-giving, celebration, stars, these are all common.
This is a tactic of zero sum conquering ideologies:
- you take the symbolism of the oppressed and make it evil in your ideology, ie. the pentagram as a symbol of health and women turned into a christian satanic symbol
- you take the oppressed culture's holidays and make them your own, easing the usurping, I know secularists and people of other religions who celebrate xmas "just because"
At this point I consider "Christmas" a global secular holiday.
I put the people who whine about the religious aspect of Christmas into two boxes: Either they're playing power / politics games, or they're like the people who think that Betamax / CCS / ect were better.