Easter Bonnets

Miss Janice explains the etiquette of wearing hats, gloves and corsages.

 Hats are a beautiful accessory and certainly popular to wear on Easter Sunday. You may keep your hat on while indoors, but should remove it at dusk. Gentlemen should remove their hats when entering a building. Hat pins are lovely adornments to a hat and should be pinned on the right side of a lady's hat and on the left side of a gentleman's hat. Make it Southern...A lot of Southern gentlemen still tip their hat to a lady (some men were just raised right)!...All y'all know by now that you may start wearing your white shoes and carrying your white pocketbooks on Easter Sunday...Here's Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy with Young John Fitzgerald, Jr. on Easter Sunday 1963...

 There is also etiquette to be followed when wearing gloves and corsages. Proper etiquette dictates that gloves are removed when entering a building, whether it is a tearoom or a church. It is not considered proper to shake hands while wearing gloves (only the Queen of England can get away with this) or to eat or drink while wearing gloves. Remove your gloves in a lady like fashion, one finger at a time. Always hold your pocketbook and gloves in your left hand so that you will be ready to shake hands at any time.Remember, only the Queen of England may wear gloves while shaking hands! Corsages are a tradition in the South and may be worn on Easter Sunday. Corsages are pinned to the clothing on the left shoulder. (Read more.)

(Artwork courtesy of Hermes)

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Mamdani’s Red Guards Take Shape

 From AND Magazine:

We reported some time ago on New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to create a “Department of Community Safety.” This is the initiative that gets characterized misleadingly as simply a plan to replace cops with social workers. It is much more than that. It is much more frightening than that. It is the ultimate fulfillment of the leftist vision of abolishing the police and substituting for them a cadre of individuals who will be empowered to forge the new society Mamdani and his Marxist supporters envision.

The first step in this effort has been the creation of something called the Office of Community Safety. It has an initial budget of a quarter of a billion dollars. Mamdani established the office in a March 19 executive order. The Office of Community Safety is intended as a precursor to a larger Department of Community Safety, which would have a total yearly budget of $1.1 billion, with more than $600 million coming from undefined “transfers of existing programs.” (Read more.)

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The Sacrament of Easter

Making all Sundays holy to the Lord. From Seton Magazine:

If Christians in the midst of the world are to keep alive a Christian culture and the spirit of Easter throughout the year, it is essential to truly live Sunday as “the Day of the Lord.” Man is an image of God, and God is a community of persons (the Blessed Trinity). By gathering as a parish family to celebrate and receive the Holy Eucharist each Sunday and then “resting in the Lord” as a family for the remainder of the day, we become practically what we are in truth, an image of the triune God Who is love.

Certainly there are obstacles in our contemporary culture to living Sunday as a day of worship and rest. Saint John Paul II noted in 1998 that, “Until quite recently, it was easier in Christian countries to keep Sunday holy because it was an almost universal practice and because, even in the organization of civil society, Sunday rest was considered a fixed part of the work schedule…"

Unfortunately, when Sunday loses its fundamental meaning and becomes merely part of a ‘weekend,’ it can happen that people stay locked within a horizon so limited that they can no longer see ‘the heavens.’ Hence, though ready to celebrate, they are really incapable of doing so. The disciples of Christ, however, are asked to avoid any confusion between the celebration of Sunday, which should truly be a way of keeping the Lord’s Day holy, and the ‘weekend,’ understood as a time of simple rest and relaxation” (DD, 4). (Read more.)

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Lilacs

Lilacs by Pierre-Joseph Redouté

 

Lilacs by Mary Cassatt

 

Our lilacs are blooming in Maryland. Here is an article on the history of lilacs. Lilacs were much loved by Marie-Antoinette. And here is an excerpt from the poem "Lilacs" by Amy Lowell:

Lilacs in dooryards

Holding quiet conversations with an early moon;

Lilacs watching a deserted house

Settling sideways into the grass of an old road;

Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom

Above a cellar dug into a hill.

You are everywhere.

You were everywhere.

You tapped the window when the preacher preached his sermon,

And ran along the road beside the boy going to school.

You stood by the pasture-bars to give the cows good milking,

You persuaded the housewife that her dishpan was of silver.

And her husband an image of pure gold.

You flaunted the fragrance of your blossoms

Through the wide doors of Custom Houses—

You, and sandal-wood, and tea,

Charging the noses of quill-driving clerks

When a ship was in from China.

 (Read more.)

 

More lilacs at East of the Sun, West of the Moon. 

Lilacs by Dora Koch-Stetter

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The Case for the Most Obvious Promotion in Washington

 From Amuse on X:

Pam Bondi is out. Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General, steps into the interim role while Washington cycles through its familiar ritual of speculation, audition, and delay. The question of who should permanently lead the Department of Justice is already being asked in conservative circles, and the right answer requires very little searching. She is already confirmed by the Senate, already winning in court, and already doing things as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights that MAGA America has been demanding from the federal government for years. Her name is Harmeet Dhillon, and the case for elevating her to Attorney General is, once you examine her record, almost embarrassingly obvious.

Start with the story that crystallized for millions of conservatives exactly who Dhillon is and how she operates.

On January 18 of this year, a mob stormed Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. The congregation was mid-service. Protesters flooded the building, disrupted the worship, and targeted the church because one of its pastors reportedly worked for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Former CNN anchor Don Lemon was there. Not as a passive observer, but as someone who had attended an organizer briefing beforehand, kept the church location secret until his live coverage began, and was, according to the federal indictment, blocking a door and preventing congregants from exiting. Within 48 hours, Dhillon went on television and made a statement that electrified conservative America. “Come next Sunday,” she said, “nobody should think in the United States that they’re going to be able to get away with this.” She was not posturing. She meant it. (Read more.)

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Sacred Art and the Coming of Islam

 From Hilary White at the Sacred Images Project:

And yet, despite the chaos, the sacred arts flourished. In Constantinople, the domes of Hagia Sophia shimmered with gold and glass mosaics that captured the uncreated light of heaven. In Ravenna, Christ gazed out from apse and arch with the serene confidence of divine kingship. Processions of saints in jewel-toned robes crossed the walls of sanctuaries like heavenly courtiers. The image of God made visible, incarnate, and triumphant had become the cornerstone of Christian art.

To the west, Britain and Ireland, far from the imperial centres, were stirring with new creative energy. Missionaries and monks were carving a fresh Christian identity into the raw material of a post-Roman world. The Book of Durrow, the Lindisfarne Gospels, and the carved stone crosses of Iona emerged from this wild frontier of the faith, filled with patterns and symbols that spoke of eternity in knots and spirals.

But across the deserts of Arabia, something was stirring, something that would soon cast a long and complex shadow over the entire Christian world.

Within a single lifetime, Islam would rise from obscurity and sweep across the old heartlands of Eastern Christianity. Antioch, Damascus, Jerusalem, and Alexandria, centres of theology, pilgrimage, monasticism, and sacred art, would fall under a new religious power. The sea that had been a Christian sea, ringed by basilicas and monastic foundations, would become the heart of an Islamic empire.

The world had changed, and Christian culture would never be the same. (Read more.)

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Easter Cakes

 From Country Living:

Easter is a time for dressing up, attending church services, decorating eggs and making Easter crafts. But it's also for planning tasty menus for Easter dinner or Easter brunch. And it isn't an Easter celebration without an over-the-top, fancy spring Easter cake! We've rounded up some of our favorites, from easy recipes that'll feed a crowd to simpler ideas for smaller gatherings. From light and refreshing spring flavors like blueberry, citrus, and coconut to down right decadent and rich chocolate cakes, there's something for everyone. This list has simple cakes, festive cakes, and elegant cakes that make gorgeous Easter centerpieces! (Read more.)

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Irish Easter

The old Irish celebrated Easter on a different date from the continental Church for two centuries or more during what is known as the Dark Ages. This has fascinated me ever since I did a book report on the Synod of Whitby (664) in college. It was at Whitby that the conflict between the different customs of Celtic and Roman Christians in the British isles came to a head. Most of the north of Britain had been converted by the zealous Irish monks, led by Saint Colum Cille. The Irish monks wore a tonsure different from the Roman monks; the Irish had their foreheads shaved from ear to ear, with long hair trailing down their back, while the Roman custom was to shave the crown of the head. The Irish claimed that their tonsure came from Saint John the Evangelist whereas the Romans claimed to have inherited their tonsure from Saint Peter. The tonsure, however, did not cause nearly as much problems as the date of Easter. Members of the same family, depending on whether they followed the Celtic or Roman practice, would keep Lent and Easter at different times. This caused no end of inconvenience for those who had to cook the meals.

According to Edmund Curtis in A History of Ireland (1936):

Under the papal authority the Paschal date had been fixed for the Church by Victorius in 457, but the Celtic churches adhered to the Paschal term as fixed by Anatolius in the third century. As a practical result the Irish were found keeping Easter from the fourteenth to the twentieth of the lunar month and the Continental church between the sixteenth and the twenty-second. On this matter of controversy many letters had passed between the Irish leaders and Rome. Popes Honorius and John IV had urged the Irish to conform and had been answered by Cummian and by Columbanus. The latter, writing to Saint Gregory the Great, boldly maintained the Irish position over Easter, but conceded to the Holy See a primacy of honor and a measure of supreme authority, adding, 'it is known to all that our Savior gave Saint Peter the keys of the kingdom of Heaven, and that Rome is the principal seat of the orthodox faith.'

By the middle of the seventh century southern Ireland had accepted the [Roman] Easter and only northern Ireland and Iona, strong in the name and memory of Columba, stood out. (pp.15-16)

Iona finally gave in around 716 and northern Ireland followed suit. After the Synod at Whitby had brought most of northern Britain into the Roman calculation of Easter, the Celtic monks in Scotland and northern England had withdrawn to Iona. What intrigues me about this controversy is that there were great saints who vehemently disagreed with each other on ecclesiastical matters.

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How Some Puritans Saw Easter

 From The Earl of Manchester's Foote:

Much like their more famous ‘war on Christmas’, some hardline Puritans of the early 17th Century also had Easter in their sights.

It has been said that the transformation of Easter into a secular festival second only to Christmas has accelerated in recent years. With the long weekend affording many families the chance to come together, commerce has not been slow in sensing an opportunity to capitalise and the profusion of Easter-related paraphernalia – gifts, cards, and confections – only seems to grow. “Easter”, one commentator wryly noted, “is the new Christmas”.

This would have been no surprise in late medieval England, where Easter outranked Christmas as the key festival of the Christian year and was surrounded by a schedule of feast days, public events, and rituals.

But the English Reformation saw much of the Roman Catholic ceremony associated with Easter striped away, in favour of the more austere – and, to the Puritan mind, more fitting – fasting, contemplation, and prayer.

Historian Ronald Hutton traces the downgrading of Easter to the lead-up to the English Reformation led by its chief architect, Archbishop Sir Thomas Cranmer, who energetically pursued a policy of destruction of many of the medieval rituals associated with the festival, such as the dressing of special ‘Easter sepulchres’ – an arched recess generally in a church’s chancel which, from Good Friday to Easter day, would have had a crucifix and sacred elements placed within it – a long standing English tradition that was effectively snuffed out as early as 1548. (Read more.)

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