Easter came and went this year with its traditional recognition of Holy Week activities contrasting with the ‘wet and wild dream weekend’ parties that clutter up the entertainment scene across the island.
It left us bemused at the speed at which holiday weekends now come and go before you have time to remember what it is you are celebrating or why you are overspending. No sooner than we said goodbye to Easter Monday the Labour Day commercial advertisements were out (Labour Day is on Saturday May 23 so we get the holiday on Monday May 25).
Then before you know it here comes the ‘Emancipendence’ weekend with its double-dip holidays on August 1 and 6 creating double-time woes.
A glance at the calendar tells me that once again we are going to have a convoluted package this year as Emancipation Day falls on a Saturday, August 1, which gives you Monday, August 3 as a holiday, immediately followed by another holiday later in the week, Independence Day, on Thursday August 6.
The granting of two holidays within three working days of each other still confounds me, when as an alternative we could have had one grand combination of the two most significant milestones in our history celebrated over the first week-end in August as Emancipendence week-end.
Meanwhile back to the Easter holidays. I don’t know what they do at those entertainment centres and I am getting too old and overdressed to find out. There seems to be a rush by government to establish and legalise those centres in populated places. That should not be. The horrific noise emanating over the fence from the so-called dance music turned up to insufferable levels night and day and which invade innocent homes is enough to turn this island into one gigantic tone-deaf generation. Jamaica must be the noisiest place on earth.
Another form of entertainment, the Budget Debates, are on the horizon. The debates will drone on while our Members, weighed down by Easter bun and cheese, catch a doze on the parliamentary benches.
On another page former Reggae Boyz Coach Rene Simoes raises coaching to a higher intelligence-driven approach at a youth camp in Jamaica while the national team flounders at the World Cup finish line.
COUNTER CLAIMS
And counter claims between St. Kitts and Jamaica over who first legalised Rastafari while a Gleaner cartoon’ bredrin’ chuckles and puffs, “for years Rasta been persecuted, now dem fighting over I an’ I”.
We can take refuge in our churches. Memories are short but just think that a few years ago the churches were empty, and the physical manifestations of a traditional Easter weekend in Jamaica were absent. The coronavirus epidemic had bottled up Easter and cast a sombre shadow which caused a shutdown around the entire globe.
But we did not allow the human spirit, enriched by the eternal promise of Easter, to be overcome by the gloom and doom of that pandemic spread.
Today there is another shadow cast around the world, and which may have restrained the effervescence normally displayed at this year’s kite flying and bun eating season.
The war in the Middle East has brought a smouldering halt to all the joys and expectations of blessings from above, and all the cherished sights and scenes that once drew millions of visitors to the Holy Land.
For centuries Easter has been a drawing card where Christians descended on Jerusalem to walk in the footsteps of Jesus along the Garden of Gethsemane, the pavement where He stood before Pilate, the path called the Via Dolorosa which led to Mount Calvary, and the Holy Sepulchre where he had been laid to rest.
EERILY SILENT
This year, as it has been the since the Hamas/Israel war erupted in 2022, the Holy City lay eerily silent on Easter Sunday, as ‘Israeli’ restrictions continued to keep pilgrims away from the Holy Sepulchre.
The war has brought humanity to a new low with the struggle for a pyrrhic victory so far accounting for the loss of thousands of lives.
We Are the World, sang Michael Jackson and a group of artistes in 1985. Yet, asks Gleaner columnist Elizabeth Morgan, which world leaders will stand up to oppose the turmoil on the eastern front? We gripped our seats in horror as another holocaust loomed with the threat of destruction of one of the world’s oldest civilisations in a matter of hours.
The threat was lifted, but the cauldron still burns. Who is calling out the players? Stop them before it’s too late, begged Patti Page in a 1960 hit song.
The Lord’s prayer instructs us to plead for “Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven”. His will is certainly not the situation on Earth today. Instead we see wars, and rumours of wars all around us. “Nations rising against nations, and kingdoms against kingdoms, and earthquakes in various places, as well as famines.”
This prayer should remind us that God’s will, which is the perfect state of existence in any form underlined by the maxim “to love one another as I have loved you” is being done in heaven. And what he desires us to do is to ask that it be transferred down to Earth so that the justice and peace of God’s kingdom can become a reality in people’s hearts and minds.
The simple request to God is that His will be done in Jamaica, in the United States, across the continents, across the world.
Lance Neita is a public relations & communications specialist. Send feedback to lanceneita@hotmail.com and columns@gleanerjm.com
