Radio Script #144
Little Talks On Common Things
April 13. 1952
As has been our custom ever since these broadcasts started nearly four years ago, we shall devote tonight’s program to the subject of Easter. There have been few times in human history when men so obviously needed the Easter message of hope and renewal as we need it today. Pessimism, frustration, despair assail us on every hand. We are told our country was never more prosperous, yet every fami Iy’s share in the national debt is over six thousand dollars. We are told there are signs of a revival of religious and moral principles, yet corruption reaches into the highest levels of business, professions and government.(The season of Lent in 1954 had already begun when we learned the news of incredible destruction wrought by the H bomb)* When in thousands of years on earth, man seems tochave learned I ittle more than how to ki II each other more efficiently, more horribly, and in greater numbers, God may well be asked the question of the psalmist, “What is man that Thou art mindful of him?”
Into such doubting and cy.nical thinking comes this day the Easter message, telling us that the basic principle is not death, but life — not despair, but hope not frustration, but faith. That which was dead sti I~ lives. The last, lone hope of the disciples, nai led to a Roman cross of grim despair, has sprung a live again. The dark frustrations of Gethsemane, buried In an even darker tomb, have given way to abiding faith. What is man that Thou are mindful of him? Man is the embod i ment of life — life to be made eterna I because the Ange I of the Lord rolled away the stone from the door.
This sentence was apparently added when this script was re-broadcast in 1954. Easter customs have changed much through the ages# and some of them have changed within comparatively recent years. In my boyhood, in a Maine vi J I age under the foothirlls of the Wh i te Mounta I ns, I never saw any recogn i ti on gi ven to Good Friday. I suppose the reason was that, in the first decade of this century, in Maine communities Good Friday was given special significance only by Roman Catholics and Episcopalians. Neithe,r of those faiths had a church in my boyhood town. We had four churches — Congregational, Methodist, Universalist and Advent — and none of them paid any attention to Good Friday, though all of them celebrated Easter.
Nor do I recall any recognition of Palm Sunday, and what is more, there was no nOT ice of Lent. I cannot reca II that I had ever heard of Lent unt i I I was a student in college. Ash Wednesday had no meaning in my rural Maine vi 1- lage. My earl iest recollection of Easter is of hearing my mother and my aunts talking about new clothes, and when I was about ten years old I went with my father on the grocery wagon one Sunday afternoon, carry i ng Easter I i I ies from the church to the homes of sick folks. And’ have a fond memory of hearing the joyous Easter story read from the scripture by a woman preacher sti II living, residing now at the Sunset Home here in Watervi lie. For, when I was a boy in grammar school, the minister of my rural church was Miss Hannah Powe’ 10 Since few boys pay any attention to fashions and clothes, probably the ladies did don new hats and new dresses at Easter, half a century ago. But, frankly, I cannot remember anything about it. I can recall that, a couple of times a year, Aunt Mary Woodbury, the village dress maker, would cane to the house, bUT I have no reco Ilect i on at a II of the creat ions made by those vis its nor whether they occurred at Easter time. Certainly in my boyhood town there were none of those sunrise Easter servi ces. The once a year church goers — and I suppose there were some of that breed even fifty years ago — had to go inside a church edifice and at a conventional church hour. There was no rushing to a hi I I top for sunrise service, then rush I ng Jus t as mad I y off to the country club to see if the second green was dry enough to use.
For a reference to Easter 75 years ago, I am indebted to Clifton McMullen of the Watervi lie Senti ne I staff. Mrs. McMullen’s great grandfather was Joseph Clark, a prominent lumberman of Somerset County, and In 1878 proprietor of the hote I at The For,ks, whl ch I tol d you about severa I weeks ago. Mrs. McMullen has in her possession a letter which Joseph Clark received from one Charles Boon in April, 1878. The letter Is addressed from Parlin Pond and says: “Mr. Clark. Dear Sir: P lease send up to me one ga lion of mol asses and a dollar’s worth of flour by stage and I will send you fish for them as soon as I catch them. I have no ice chisel or I might send them sooner. Easter Is comi ng on and I want someth i ng better on Pa 1m Sunday as we II as the next Sabbath. I have nothing here but Indian meal, and that wi II not make bread without stove or baker, and have none of either. I have nothing to put either roo lasses or flour in that can send, but whatever comes I will rem I t back by return of i!~ stage. Yours truly, Chas. Boon.”
We hope and bel ieve Mr. Boon got his Easter supplies, for we understand Joseph Clark was a gracious and ~indly man. How we should count our Easter blessings and be ashamed of our complaining and our confusion when we think of Mr. Boon 75 years ago in the wilderness up around Parlin Pond, asking only for molasses and flour to celebrate Easter. Evidence that little attention was paid to Easter a hundred years ago Is shown by a perusal of the old newspapers. For Instance, the Kennebec Journal I n the sprl ng of 1859 was comp lete I y s I lent on the subject of Easter. Although it contains plenty of Items pertaining to churches, there is no evidence that Easter Sunday was regarded as di fferent from any other Sunday down in the State Capital in 1859.
But the Journal did give recognition to another spring observance that has long since passed Into ob II vion In Ma Ine. I refer to Fast Day. In Its issue of Aprl I 22, 1859 the Journal said: ”We issue our paper this week sanewhat In advance, in order to accomodate ourselves and our friends in the observance of the annua I State Fast — the po lit i ca I Sabbath of the year, In which the effort of all should be made to repent of and put away the sinfulness of the i r I i vas. It I s thought by some that every form of d lsease in the physical system is but an outward expression of the moral and spiritual states of men. If that be so, then the real curative process should be very thorough. One of our duties on this Fast Day Is to look into the matter.”
We are sti II plagued by the w I de I y shi ft i ng date of Easter. Un II ke Christmas, the other great festival of the church, it does not give us the conven lence of fa II I ng a Iways on the same day of the mo.nth. I n a II western Christendom the date of Easter is fixed as the fi rst Sunday after the fi rst full moon after the varna I equinox. The vernal equinox is the astronomer’s term for the time when the sun crosses the equator in the turn from winter to summer. That date is usually the 21st of March, although the exact time may vary from afternoon of the 20th to afternoon of the 22nd. I f the ‘moon reaches Its fu lion the night of the 20th, and the exact hour of the equ i nox has come the same afternoon, and the following day is Sunday, that day, March 21, is Easter. That combination of events can happen only once in several thousand years. More usually mentioned in the accounts of Easter as its earliest possib Ie date is March 22nd.
When the equinox falls on March 21 and the moon has been at its full on the previous night, it will come to the full again on April 18th. If that date is a Sunday, Easter will not come until the following Sunday, April 25. That is the last possible date for Easter. Easter may f.all then anywhere between March 21 and Aprl I 25. In the. 200.· years between 1901 and 2100 Easter wi II not occur on either March 21 or 22. The’earl iest date for Easter in that whole period of two centuries wi II be March 23, and that wi II happen just twice. In fact one of the occasions has already come and gone, for it was In 1913. It w I I I happen aga I n I n the year 2008. On the other hand, twice during this 200 .years from 1901 to 2100 Easter w I II fa lion the latest poss i b Ie date, Ap rll 25. One of those occurences was only nine years ago in the midst of the war In 1943. The other occasion wi II be In the year 2038. Twice also Easter will fallon April 24th in that long period, in 2011 and in 2095.
School and college students speak so frequently of thei r Easter vacation that they find It hard to understand why the vacation does not always coincide with Easter. The truth is that, in most schools, the vacation is a spring recess, pretty we II f I xed to fa II with I n a stated period I n the ca lendar year. With the date of Easter shifting as much as 35 days, the spring recess would In some years come so I ate as to leave I itt Ie room for c I asses between its end and graduation, If the recess Included Easter Day. You wi II therefore find that most schools make no attempt to have their spring vacation habitually Include Easter, although it does frequently include it.
The gospe I s record that our Lord ce lebrated the Passover on Thursday, whi Ie the Jewish priests, Including Caiaphas, the high priest before whom the accused Jesus was brought, celebrated it on Friday, the day of the crucifixion. Since the Jewish day Is always counted from sunset to sunset, the explanation may lie in the Jewish and non-Jewish differences In the account. At an’y rate the difference led to bitter and bloody controversy in the ear Iy church. It was not unti I the Counci I of Nicaea in the year 325 that it was decided that Easter sha II a Iways fa lion a Sunday, but It left a method of fixing Easter that causes a lot of confusion in the modern world. Not only school terms, but law terms, business arrangements, and Industrial plans are affected by a moving Easter. Ever since 1900 Chambers of Commerce, both national and international, have passed resolutions favoring a fixed date for Easter, as we have for Christmas. When the International Congress of Chambers of Commerce met in Rome in 1923, an ardent resolution for a fixed Easter was addressed to the Holy See, In 1925 the matter was referred to the League of Nations, which summoned a conference of the Roman, Eastern Orthodox and Ang I i can churches, and it was agreed that there existed practically a unanimous wish throughout the Christian world for a fixed Easter.
About fi fty years ago a bi II was introduced Into the British Pari iament fixing the date of Easter as the second Sunday in April. One of the arguments for the bi II was that it is the nearest Sunday to the generally accepted date of the event which Easter commemorates. Although it is impossible to give uncontestable proof of the exact date of crucifixion and resurrection, the weight of scholarly opinion fixes the criciflxion as having occurred on Friday, Apri I 7, A.D. 30. In 1928 Pari iament fina Ily passed a fixed Easter bi II, stating that Easter should always be on the first Sunday after the second Saturday in Aprl I. But the bit I contained a joker — the provision that it should not become effective in the Angl ican church unti I it had international acceptance. That acceptance has never been secured, and Easter stil I fluctuates by 35 days, as It has done ever since the Counci I of N i cooa 1,627 years ago.
Trying to fix dates and arrange calendars to coincide with Mother Nature Is a difficult Job, because any division the mathematician makes just doesn’t come out even. As everybody knows, there iss light Iy more time than 365 days in a solar year. That’s why we have to have Leap Year every four years. Even that added day doesn’t quite even things up; so in the even hundred years, Leap Year is every 400th year. The modern fixing of Easter Is accord Ing to ca lendar tab les prepared for Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, when he reformed the whole calendar, in an attempt to reconcile the solar year with the lunar year. It was simply an impossible job, and those tables sometimes produce strange results. For Instance, in 1923 the fu II moon fe I I exact I y on the Sunday g I van by the tab les for the ce lebratlon of Easter; as a result the Resurrection, going by the real moon, was being celebrated before the Crucifixion.
But a II th1s about the date of Easter is of mere pass Ing interest. What counts is the significance of Easter, whenever It falls. Let us never forget that Easter, coming at the time when the buds and seeds of spring come into being, reminds us that no Roman cross could end a glorious life; that we are not doomed puppets In a mechanical universe; that, however dark and fearsome the way, however shut up in the tomb of despair, the Angel of the Lord will rol I away the stone from the door.
Year: 1952