Today is Holy Thursday and this year it falls on April 1 which is All Fools’ Day. In the Western world, Easter Sunday is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the first day of Spring, March 21. Two days before that is Good Friday, three before is Holy Thursday and 40 days (not counting Sundays) before is Ash Wednesday. Holy Thursday is the re-enactment of the Passover when Jesus Christ changed bread and wine into his body and blood. There is also the washing of feet as Jesus did to his disciples.

The timing of the observance has to do with pagan Rome where the people worshipped many gods, including the goddess of spring whom they named Eostre. On the first full moon after the first day of spring she would be worshipped. In that cultural context, in order to impress upon the people the importance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ to Christians, the first Sunday after the spring full moon was decreed Easter Sunday. It was the African Pope Victor I who made this decision.

Last week my piece, “The unfortunate statue controversy” spoke of the Paul Bogle statue and the objections by some. One person pen-named “Anguish of Being”, who wrote three times in the online edition of the Observer, challenged me to point out a depiction of a black dreadlocked Christ in the Roman Catholic Church. The timing of this request fits into the Holy Thursday observance and Good Friday, which is tomorrow. I invite “Anguish of Being” to look at the crucifix in St Jude’s Roman Catholic Church on Newark Avenue, off Waltham Park Road.

Edna Manley’s depiction of the Blessed Virgin Mary has been in the Holy Cross Roman Catholic Church in Half Way Tree since the late 1960s. The 14 stations of the cross in that church are African sculptures. In Africa, where the Roman Catholic Church is growing the fastest, the depiction of Jesus Christ is African in many places. The late Michelangelo was not the only commissioned sculptor in the Roman Catholic Church.

I state again that the Roman Catholic Church has always given its sculptors artistic licence. The recognition of culture is dealt with in number 53 of the document Gaudium et Spes of the Second Vatican Council. Protestants, Evangelicals, Fundamentalists and others use Michelangelo’s depictions of Jesus far more than Catholics today.

“How ironic, socialists wanting to force a statue on a people” wrote “Anguish of Being”. I do not want to force a statue on anyone, and in any case no opinion poll has been taken. There was a loud protest about the Emancipation Park statues in 2003. But when an opinion poll was taken on the matter, 53 per cent said, “Let the statues remain.”

Even if a majority in St Thomas do not want the statue it is a national monument and the vote should be taken of the entire country. I state again that Edna Manley understood racial equality better than many of our own people. Some of the ways in which some of us look down on ourselves due to mental slavery was never done by Edna Manley.

And with respect to “ugliness” I ask again, who determines these things? I invite everyone to read an article on beauty contests in the Jamaica College magazine of 1966, “Mirror-Mirror on the wall” by OB Golding, then head boy of JC. It is available at the National Library of Jamaica. And by the way, the same Orrett Bruce Golding is today the prime minister of Jamaica.

Less than 500 years ago, April 1 was the first day of the year in Europe. Some European countries changed the first day to January 1 but in those days of slow communication, the rural parts of European countries did not know until decades later. So those who still thought the beginning of the year was April 1 were regarded as fools and a custom was made up of playing pranks on people who were called April Fools.

Gradually the custom spread to the point where all sorts of pranks are played on All Fools’ Day. Perhaps the greatest All Fools’ Day prank in Jamaica was sprung by the now defunct newspaper The Daily News in 1974. At the time the latest craze in Europe was “streaking” or running naked through the streets or elsewhere.

The newspaper announced on its front page on March 31 that year that there was a plan to streak in New Kingston and listed the route down Knutsford Boulevard and on to some other road at midday on April 1. The crowds came out, including a police car, to see what would happen, but no streaking took place. It was all a prank. The Daily News in its editorial stated that they did it because they thought it was time that our people learnt to laugh again, what with all the crime and violence taking place. For example, the Gun Court came into being in March 1974. But that was 36 years ago. Have a Holy Easter.

ekrubm765@yahoo.com