DAY OF SIGNIFICANCE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 104, 13 April 1933, Page 9

DAY OF SIGNIFICANCE

Good Friday is a day of special religious significance to many people throughut the world,' and yet few realise that when you say “Good Friday” you are commemorating Freya, the Scandinavian Venus; while, when you speak of “Easter” you are commemorating Eastre, the Anglo-Saxon Goddess of Spring. |/.| Just how Good Friday got its name is not known for certain, though the most generally accepted view is that it is by derivation “God’s Friday.” This, however, can only apply to the Englishspeaking peoples, for the anniversary has a variety of names. Thus in France it is known as “Holy Friday” or “Passion Friday.” In Germany it is “Still Frietag,” that is “Quiet Friday.” Because it was then a day of rigid fasting and lengthy prayers, our Anglo-Saxon ancestors called it “Long Friday,” by which name it is still known in Denmark. In the Greek Church it has been known at various times as “The Pascha of the Cross,” “The Preparation,” “The Redemption,” and “The Day of the Lord’s Passion,” “The Sixth Holy Day of the Pascha, ” and many others. In the little old churchyard of St. Bartholomew’s, Smithfield, England, the scene of one of the quaint old customs that have come down to us is still preserved. It is of such long standing that no one knows anything definite of its origin, although it is thought that it began as the fulfilment of a condition attached to the bequest of the man upon whose time-worn tomb the annual rite takes place. There, on Good Friday morning, gather twenty-one widows with the churchwardens; one by one they step forward and take from the tombstone one of the new sixpences laid thereon, step over the stone, and are then presented with a hot-cross bun. In recent years the / churchwardens have, later in the day, greatly supplemented the. original bequest.—By Una V. Foster in “Sydney-Morning Herald.” I I 4 ■ ’»*» A * < 1 1 I -" 1 —sc ;