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Easter ... and a cunning plan for Stephen Harper

Easter Island is, perhaps obviously, an island.
opinion_maxedout1

Easter Island is, perhaps obviously, an island. It's a Polynesian — from the Latin, poly (many) + nesian (hula dancers) — island in the Pacific ocean, lying some 3,500 kilometres off the coast of Chile, a country claiming it as a special territory. Chile's claim, made in the late 19th century, seems to have been motivated largely by sheep, something I'm certain only a Chilean can fully explain or appreciate.

Easter Island was named Easter Island by Jacob Roggeveen, a Dutch explorer who was actually looking for another island but somehow landed there and, being European, assumed the island, although inhabited, was both unknown and unnamed and certainly ripe for the taking. He named it Easter Island because he landed there on Easter Sunday in 1722... not that you, or I, care.

Easter, on the other hand, is the religious holiday celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ, son of God and the man after whom the exclamation — Jesus Christ! — was named. The resurrection of Jesus is the Christian belief that he miraculously came back to life on the Sunday following the Friday of his crucifixion, an event after which the exclamation — Christ on a cross! — was coined. And just so those of you firmly rooted in popular culture understand, this has absolutely nothing to do with zombies.

The resurrection of Jesus is a central tenet of the Christian faith. Without going into too much detail — a ship some of you may think has already sailed — the Romans, who brooked no rebellion, crucified Jesus on a Friday. Weirdly, it's come to be known as Good Friday although I'm sure most of the people siding with Jesus' rebellion wouldn't have thought of it as being particularly good at the time.

But to move this story along, his body was buried in a tomb and three days later God raised him from the dead. Even back in that day people might have had trouble believing this except for the fact that Jesus, formerly dead, appeared to many people over a span of 40 days before ascending to Heaven to sit at the right hand of God.

So far, so good. Crucifixion on Good Friday; resurrection on Easter Sunday, though, of course, they weren't called that then, just Friday and Sunday, but in Latin.

In the intervening centuries, various religious bodies held sometimes heated meetings to formally establish the rules around when to celebrate Good Friday and Easter Sunday. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which being various religious sects just seem to like to argue among themselves.

At the heart of the matter though is the whole Friday-Sunday conundrum. While the crucifixion and resurrection happened on specific dates — largely lost to antiquity since no one still uses the calendar being used at that time owing, naturally, to the whole B.C/A.D. thing which couldn't have happened to begin with until the unfortunate events of Good Friday — the religious holidays of Good Friday and Easter Sunday have to happen, by definition, on Friday and Sunday. They can't, for example, happen on April 1st and 3rd or 15th and 17th since those dates could easily fall on, say, Monday and Wednesday or Tuesday and Friday. Still with me?

If you're stuck with a Friday and Sunday event, you have to decide which Friday and Sunday it's going to fall on, right? You or I might be inclined to say, "Why not the first — or second — Friday and Sunday in April?" That would be a good question, since there was an April back in the day.

But religion being religion and therefore being nothing if not mystical, such a simplistic solution seems... too simple. The signal achievement of the First Council of Nicaea was coming up with the formula to determine the date of Easter. The First Council of Nicaea was held in 325A.D. I do not know when or whether Easter was celebrated for the first couple of hundred years after Jesus was crucified and I suspect you don't really care.

Anyway, and I'm not making this up, the Christian bishops gathered in Nicaea lo those many years ago decided Easter would fall on the first Sunday after the full moon following the March equinox. Now you understand why I said I'm not making that up. Factoring in a Sunday following a Friday following two astronomical events, Easter falls on a Sunday between — under the Gregorian calendar — March 22nd and April 25th, a span of just over a month.

Lord knows I don't want to make this any more complicated than it already is, but when the First Council of Nicaea was held, the Gregorian calendar hadn't been invented yet. Eastern Christianity still celebrates Easter based on the Julian calendar, which was the calendar of the day back in the day. According to that calendar, Easter falls between April 4th and May 8th.

The long and short of this is — okay, the long — Easter this year is March 31st, unless you're Eastern Orthodox in which case it's May 5th. And if you're lucky enough to be Jewish, you'll celebrate Passover on March 26th and I'm not even going to begin to explain that connection.

Why does any of this matter to me? Because I hate Stephen Harper. There, I've said it. I'm tired of him dismantling what we like to think of as Canada. I'm tired of him, among many other things, muzzling scientists who might or might not report findings inconvenient to his overriding philosophical conviction which seems to be to turn Canada into a petro dictatorship regardless of the social, environmental or constitutional consequences. If I weren't such a peace-loving guy — and more than a little bit worried about a visit from a national police or security agency — I'd advocate the violent overthrow of the government. That's how much I've grown to hate Stephen Harper.

Instead, I think we should get the millions of people who voted against him, the millions more who were too lazy to vote at all but wish they'd have voted against him, and what I suspect are quite a few people who voted for him but are regretting it, to each contribute one dollar. We could probably organize it on Facebook or something like that.

What would we do with the money? Bribe the guy who flies his jet to take Stephen, Chuckles Baird and the entire Office of Religious Freedom — Stevie's idea of money well spent — drop them over Easter Island on Easter and make it look like the plane went down in the Pacific. He could then retire to a South Pacific island where scantily-clad women would hula for him for the rest of his days and Stephen could take his place alongside Easter Island's other stone statues, the most interesting part of Easter Island.

And while I've enjoyed all the hate mail you people have been forcing your cats to write, I would like to point out the fact Mr. Harper is a cat person. 'Nuff said.