Easter Eggs

Meat, as well as dairy products and eggs, were at one time renounced by all Christians during the Lenten fast. Among Eastern rite Christians, the discipline is still observed. Decorating and exchanging eggs at Easter have long been a sign of rejoicing. According to Wikipedia:

The egg is widely used as a symbol of new life just as a chick might hatch from the egg. The Easter egg tradition may have celebrated the end of the privations of Lent in the West, though this is speculation. Eggs were forbidden during Lent as well as other traditional fast days; since chickens would not stop producing eggs during this time, a larger than usual store tended to be available at the end of the fast, which had to be eaten quickly to prevent spoiling. Likewise, in Eastern Christianity, both meat and dairy are prohibited during the fast, and eggs are seen as "dairy" (a foodstuff that could be taken from an animal without shedding its blood). It was also traditional to use up all of the household's eggs before Lent began, which established the tradition of Pancake Day.

 

Among the most famous of Easter eggs are those made by Fabergé for the Russian Imperial Family. More HERE.

 

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The Abolition of the Hereditary Lords

 From The Imaginative Conservative:

Hereditary lords are those House of Lords members who inherit the right to sit in the upper house based on past services their families rendered to the realm. Many storied families have retained this right in their lineage for generations. Over the centuries, they have passed on their experience to their successors.

The House of Lords originated in the eleventh century, as a council of religious and temporal leaders which the king convoked to fulfill the difficult duty of rendering “counsel and aid” to their sovereign. It later developed into a more formal government institution in the thirteenth century.

In the nineteen fifties, Parliament created “life peers,” who are appointed by prime ministers to serve for life. Many have criticized these appointments as party cronies who receive the office as a political favor or because of donations to the party. They do not need to form a legacy that projects into the future.

The House of Lords has no legislative power but exercises an advisory role, correcting legislation from the House of Commons based on its members’ experience. The upper parliamentary chamber can slow down populist passions by delaying passage, proposing amendments or taking other deliberative measures. (Read more.)

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The Greatest Byzantine Greek Scholars of the Renaissance

 From The Greek Reporter:

Between the 14th and 15th centuries, a wave of Greek scholars left their beleaguered homeland in the Byzantine Empire for the Italian Peninsula, where their work would play an important role in the flowering of the Renaissance. The Renaissance, which literally means “rebirth”, was a period usually identified as lasting between the 14th and 17th centuries. It was characterized by an increased interest in the Greek and Roman past, with the scholars of the time looking back to Classical civilization for inspiration in the arts and sciences.

When the Byzantine Greek scholars arrived in Italy, they brought centuries of knowledge from Greco-Roman civilization with them. Medieval Italian scholars had already taken an interest in Classical Roman civilization, but this new wave of Byzantine intellectuals were well versed in ancient Greek sources and greatly widened the scope of the academic and artistic endeavors that were then possible. (Read more.)

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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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