WHAT IS EASTER

Easter Weekend proved to be a very sunny weekend as a friend of mine said a good holiday break but I did feel a certain amount of guilt as I sat in my caravan enjoying the sun. Why? Well as someone who was brought up a Catholic, fervently believing in Christ, and importantly I believe in the Christian Ethic and Morals, yet I never attended Mass. My excuse to myself was that I did not need to attend Church to believe in God or was I just lazy? As I began some serious navel gazing I started to look at the world as a whole and England especially and it relationships with Easter.
Most English people believe Easter is just a public holiday where they can enjoy themselves and go shopping but surely it is more then that?
Easter is the most important period in the Christian Diary it emphasises the core belief of Christianity “That Jesus was the Son of God, he suffered death on the cross to save mankind and rose from the dead” I am not trying to preach but want to put in perspective why we an Easter Break as I believe most people think it is a “Chocolate Egg Festival” Although I can understand Easter Sunday when he rose from the dead can be treated as a joyous occasion a time to celebrate, Good Friday should be a very austere day a day of great sorrow that Jesus had to suffer crucifixion. Yet on Good Friday lots of shops, cinema, tourists attraction was open, what few laws there are to govern trading on Good Friday were abused with some shops moving there tills outside claiming they were an out door market.
England is a Christian country its laws, morality and ethics are based on Christian beliefs for over thousand years so therefore why cannot this country and its government honour its core beliefs. Easter has become nothing more then a commercial excuse to make money and if you make MONEY your God you will be heading for disaster.

To finish on a more topical note if you lived in a Moslem country would you be allowed to do what we do on Easter on an important Moslem festival?

Martin Clarke