EASTER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 821, 22 April 1955, Page 5

EASTER

Sir,-It is excellent that the Broadcasting Service in this country makes so much of Good Friday and Easter in the way of services, talks and music, I am grateful for it. I hope, therefore, it is not churlish of me to say that it is a matter of regret that so good a paper as The Listener should apparently be ignorant of the meaning of the word "Easter," In your editorial and generally in your issue of April 1 you make no

distinction between the solemnity of Holy Week and Good Friday and the joyous Feast of Easter. The Listener has consistently grred in this matter’ ever since it began, despite changes of editors and staff. "Easter," says the Concise Oxford Dictionary, "Festival of -Christ’s Resurrection." "Passion music" is not "Easter music." In the last few lines of r editorial you make a proper contra ween the greyness of Good Friday did the light of Easter. But you call Good Friday a "Festival," which it is not, and you speak of Easter "Monday" as~ though that were the centre of the Queen of Festivals. Can it be that The Listener does not know that on the frst day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene, early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre’’? (Jn. xx, 1),

R. P.

TAYLOR

(Dunedin),

(It is very wrong, though very easy, to be ignorant or forgetful in these matters; and we shall try next time to be more precise. We hope, however, that what we wrote did not suffer in spirit from lax observance of the

letter.-

~Ed.