Overheard in the supermarket.. Re: Easter 🤣

[ItsFridayIminLoveJS]

In Sainsbury's today. Chocolate/ Easter egg isle.
Two young adults looking at Easter eggs.
One says to the other " l wish the fu**ing Government would make it's mind up about Easter and have it on the same date every year like Christmas.
( Can't educate the ignorant)🤦‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤷‍♀️

I've repeated this before but umpteen years ago I saw a letter in a newspaper from someone who claimed to have gone into W. H. Smith to buy a Bible as an Easter present for a child. He couldn't find any and asked an assistant where they were. She explained that they had all been taken off the shelves to make way for seasonal merchandise.

I always think that's an urban myth.
A shop like WHSmith will permanently have a seasonal section - it will just change with the seasons.
So there's no need to put away other stock.

@ItsFridayIminLoveJS who was it that decided Christmas Day will be a fixed date though?
Was it the church or the government?

@ItsFridayIminLoveJS also how do you know these young adults were "ignorant".
They might not be Christian so don't know the full "rules" about Easter.

It's a foar point really. The Whitsun bank holiday (and corresponding half term break) used to move each year until it changed to the late spring bank holiday.

I quite like the fact that the bank holiday changes, but they could fix it if they wanted to.

I work with a Brazilian guy in his 40s who didn’t know why Carnival was on a different day each year so it’s not just the young!

Ironic when you haven't spelt aisle correctly.

I don’t know why my reply was hidden but look up the Easter Act 1928 - Easter SHOULD have been fixed by the government but it’s never been implemented. So they’re right.

That wouldn't make them any less ignorant?

You can educate the ignorant though. I have learned a lot over my lifetime and previous I was ignorant to a lot of it.

i have heard this story about Easter many times over though.

Well, the word is first recorded in 1038, so someone at some time before that.

And then they messed with the calendar in seventeen something (here, with much of Europe already having moved from the old one to the new one a couple of centuries earlier but I can't remember which was Gregorian and which was Julian, someone else can look it up) and Christmas is on at least two different fixed dates, which has recently been very obvious in Ukraine when they stopped celebrating it on the Russian Orthodox date of 7th January and went over almost unanimously to 25th December.

What I wish is that schools wouldn’t base the school holidays around Easter. Just make the sprint and summer terms the same length and if Easter falls in a term, so what?

@FuzzyWuzzyWuzABear that's true I suppose. They don't know about something specific so they are ignorant about that specific thing.
I just have a feeling the OP was trying to start a "lets laugh at the thick people" thread - which is a bit rude and not as funny as she thinks it is.

They're right though. It's annoying. Especially for school holidays. Most people aren't religious these days, there's not really any reason not to fix the bank hols.

It has been tried and people objected. As a teacher I preferred terms of a more equal length.

I remember when my local authority did that, probably about 30 years ago.

My mum's Catholic friend was up in arms and refused to send her kids to school, and many of the other parents did the same.

For most of us it's about chocolate eggs but for some it is a really important religious festival.

I worked in schools a few years back and in one authority, schools were set to break up on Maundy Thursday. A Catholic school changed their term dates so that Easter fell in the middle of two weeks' holiday, citing religious reasons.

Meanwhile, a Catholic school in a neighbouring authority changed their term dates in order to stay in school for most of Holy week. Again citing religious reasons.

IIRC there was a move to fix the date of Easter but hasn't yet got agreement from all churches.

And they have the time off for it - I’m not suggesting we cut the Easter Bank holidays.
We aren’t a Catholic country and I don’t see why we need to operate as though we are, and I’m a Catholic. My mum certainly didn’t keep me off school when our school did this.

School holidays should work on the basis of what is best educationally, not what’s best for the odd Catholic. Plenty of people from other faiths have to get in with it without having a two-week holiday for their major festivals.

In Scottish state schools Easter break is the same fortnight every year. Seems to work!

A couple of local authorities round here do. They always have the first two weeks of April as "Easter" holidays, regardless of where the bank holidays are. So this year, schools are back for 4 days, then they have the 4 day Easter weekend off again.

I prefer that system, it stops the really short spring term that happens with an early Easter, followed by a really long summer term.

And Easter falls on a Sunday, every year without fail. So most people won't be sending their kids to school on Easter Day anyhow.

Make Good Friday the Bank Holiday; the Monday after Easter isn't particularly significant anyway. We don't need two bank holidays in one weekend. Especially when we have two more the following month.

I have dim recollections that the date of Easter was decided by a synod in Whitby in about 961 AD.

I'm off to Google.

I don't see why it can't be a fixed date anyway. I mean, if we're pretending 25 December was the day Jesus was born (which I think relatively few Christians actually believe) surely it would make sense to allocate a specific date to his death and resurrection?

Ignorance is a lack of knowledge or a lack of education, neither of which would be the fault of the young adults in question. You don't know what you don't know.

It is fairly staggering that they had no idea, but the pp was fine to use the word 'ignorant' to describe them.

661 AD apparently. In order to align with the current practice in much of Europe rather than the Celtic traditions.