By Amy Butler
The weather is finally beginning to be a little balmy around here, enough for me and most of my neighbors to spend evenings with our windows open. The other night happened to be the first night of Passover, and as many of my neighbors are observant Jews, through my open windows I got to enjoy the sounds of families celebrating Passover together. Laughter, strains of children singing Dayenu with great enthusiasm, and the repetition of the story again this year floated on the warm spring air.
We don’t celebrate Passover at our house, but as I listened to the rituals of story telling, song, and prayer, I thought about a Holy Week exchange that has become almost a holy ritual — at the very least a family tradition — in our house.
The conversation emerges in one form or another, usually around the start of Holy Week every single year. It’s the same child who brings it up, and the first time he did was almost 10 years ago, when he was about 5 years old. Every year since then I remind him that he raised the same question last year, but this fact does not seem to concern him in the least. He seems to feel that the question deserves another airing, as if there is some deep pastoral secret I’ve been keeping and eventually I’ll get tired of him asking and spill the beans.
It usually happens during one of my Holy Week continual schedule recitation and review sessions. These occur repeatedly (some might say obsessively) this time of year because I am usually juggling a few more work details than usual, and also because the local school board, in its vast wisdom, decides every year to schedule spring break for Holy Week. While I have never actually even been on a cruise, I was once an avid viewer of The Love Boat, and I imagine living through Holy Week at my house is quite like working as cruise director on two different cruises at the same time.
Here’s usually how the conversation goes. I begin reciting all the things that have to be done for the week to run smoothly. When I get to Friday my child interrupts with something like, “Hey Mom! Isn’t Friday the day we think about Jesus dying on the cross?”
“Yes,” I say, and try desperately to keep the conversation moving toward Sunday.
“Wait, Mom!” he interrupts again. “Isn’t that day called Good Friday?”
“Yes,” I say, knowing what’s coming, yet strangely proud of my liturgically informed child.
He finally weighs in with his annual point: “Well, what I don’t understand is why they call it GOOD Friday if that’s the day Jesus died. I think they should call it BAD Friday!”
So I begin my yearly review of why we call the day Good Friday, because I’ll bet my child is not the only one wondering. I’ve answered the question often enough to know that we call it Good Friday probably because of the development of the English language over time.
In Germany they call it Karfreitag, Mourning Friday, which seems to make more sense. But some are of the opinion that there was a time in the history of the English language that “good” meant “holy,” which would, in effect, make the day “Holy Friday.”
Still others think it was originally referred to as “God’s Friday” and, over time someone added another “o”. And then there are those who believe it’s not an etymological issue at all but more likely a theological statement: that great good came to be from the tragedy of that Friday.
At our kitchen table we sit together again and review all of these things, as we did last year and the year before. And I say one more time that as Christians we believe Jesus came to be our Savior, that he demonstrated the highest kind of love by showing us that some things are worth dying for. To recognize that gift we call the day Good Friday.
And every year, including this year, my child responds with something like the following: “Well I guess I can see why they might call it Good Friday. But I still think it’s sad. Do you think it would be okay if I called it Pretty Good Friday?”
Yet again this year, I respond that I think calling the day Pretty Good Friday is really just fine.
As I heard the sounds of my neighbors celebrating Passover, I decided that I will not field the annual Good Friday question with exasperation anymore. Instead, I will now announce the creation of a new Holy Week ritual, the Renaming of Good Friday.
Suggestions for liturgy, music, and food welcome.