[LEAPSECS] Calendar authority

[Ian Batten]

On 10 Apr 2012, at 15:42, Tony Finch wrote:

> 

> My point is that the reason it has been sitting inactive on the statute

> books for 84 years is because it would be futile to attempt it, like

> prohibition: a large proportion of the population would revolt against the

> change. 


Really?  You think that the arcane issue of when (not if) Easter is taken as a public holiday would mark insurrection in the streets to the point that it was impossible for the government to act, in a way in which (for example) the imposition of the tripling of student fees, the removal of tax credits from a significant portion of the population and embarking on a war in the middle east didn't?  Neither Good Friday nor Easter Monday is an occasion when mass is required to be taken, and the issue of Sunday trading laws not being applied on Easter Sunday is a different issue.  If people can attend mass on Easter Sunday, what business is it of the church when weekdays are taken as holiday?  In the midlands, it's been Monday and Tuesday, rather than Friday and Monday, since time immemorial, because traditionally Birmingham factories worked four and a half day weeks so a Friday bank holiday is only half a day off.

Pretty well all the major churches have indicated their opposition to same-sex marriage, and several of them (notably the Catholic church) made the same objection to civil partnerships; their influence on (UK) government policy in this area is approximately zero.  One hears Christians harumphing about same-sex marriage pretty regularly: indeed, these days organised Christianity's only concern appears to be sex.   I doubt that altering the public holidays associated with Easter would distract them from that, any more than fixing Whitsun as the Spring Bank Holiday did whenever that happened.  And even if it did, the idea that the churches have any political influence worth talking about is fifty, and more, years in the past.  As Stalin said: "The Pope?  How many divisions has be got?"

ian