The silly season - well one of the many....

I see according to the Daily Telegraph that a "Rev" (even the Torygraph has dumbed "Rev'd" down) Graham Dow is calling on all senior clergy in every denomination to agree a fixed date for Easter so that "the school holidays can be based around it".

I am sure that he means well - "but the road to........."

Every year we get a variety of silly seasons and this year the annual chestnut of the date of Easter is raised. Given the angst of the early Church (and later) over this one it is best left well alone - there is enough that divides us already. In the summer we will have the annual round of commentators saying that the exam results are only high because the system of marking has been dumbed down and then in the autumn we will have the annual round of thick politicians saying that Faith Schools cream off the best and that is why they have good results. Of course, there are many other silly seasons but these are just three of them.

But there is another, far more serious, error in this thinking that we need to grasp. The date of Easter is one of the last ways in which The Christian Calendar exerts it's authority over the secular. If we give in on this one we will regret it as the next to go will be the right to have time off to worship on Good Friday. The fools who colluded with Mrs Thatcher over Sunday Trading thought they had ensured that no one would be forced to work Sundays - now people wanting to work in retailing and the catering trade (I write as one who has retail management experience) will not get a job unless they sign a contract saying they are willing to work on Sundays - promises, promises...

Mr Dow needs to open his eyes to the systematic dismantling of our Christian Culture by this present administration. He also needs to take note of what happened in some Local Authority Areas like this one where last year, because Easter was very early in the year the LEA decided that everyone would have Good Friday and Easter Monday off and then two weeks in April. Sounds OK at first, doesn't it Mr Dow? That is until you realise that the teaching staff then had to have their summer break reduced by half a week. I know a goodly number of teachers and I can tell you that they value that 6 week summer break which they both need and deserve. Of course, there will be those, misinformed folk, who think that Teachers get far too many holidays as they only work from 9:00am - 3:00pm Monday to Friday but all the teachers I know work incredibly long hours and invariably give up part of their summer to be in school (and work at home) to prepare for the next term.

Leave the date of Easter (in the West that is Mr Dow, as I presume that is what you are talking about) as it is.