EASTER is this weekend – and millions of people across the globe are gearing up to celebrate the annual festival.
Numerous different events mark the Christian calendar during Lent, before the resurrection of Jesus is celebrated. Here is the lowdown on Good Friday 2018...
Alamy Easter Sunday is on April 1, but plenty of other days are commemorated during Lent before the important Christian festivity
When is Good Friday?
This year, Good Friday will fall on Friday, March 30.
In different traditions, the date is also known as Holy Friday, Great Friday, Black Friday or Easter Friday.
It marks the start of the Easter long weekend, which includes Easter Monday on April 2, 2018.
The date changes every year as Easter Sunday must always fall on the next full moon after Spring Equinox.
Is Good Friday a bank holiday?
Good news, Good Friday is a bank holiday, so for many people, it marked the beginning of their Easter weekend.
Monday, April 2, is also a bank holiday, but not every work will give employees these two Easter dates off.
Bank or public holidays do not have to be given to employees as paid leave, an employer can decide whether to include bank holidays as part of a worker’s statutory leave.
The Government website has more details on what your worker’s rights are in regards to public holidays.
Bank holidays may also impact how benefits are paid, the gov.uk website explains how they may be affected.
As some will get the day off work, a clever trick has shown how you can get 18 consecutive days off work using just NINE days of annual leave.
Alamy
Why do we celebrate Good Friday?
Good Friday is commemorated because the date marks the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death at Calvary.
Accounts of the Gospel state that the son of God was put to death after he was betrayed by Judas and sentenced to death.
The date falls during Holy Week on the Friday before Easter Sunday and sometimes coincides with the Jewish celebration of Passover.
Experts believe the event has been coined “Good Friday” because the word “good” means pious or holy.
Alamy Millions of Christians across the globe are set to celebrate Easter on April 1
more about the holidays HAPPY EASTER MEAL Double check your local McDonald's opening times for Easter 2018 FACE OF JESUS What did Jesus Christ look like, when was he born and where did he die? IS IT OPEN? Check out the opening times for your local Argos on Easter 2018 HANDY TO KNOW Find out Easter 2018 opening times for IKEA here EASTER UPDATES Double check your local Morrisons opening times for Easter 2018 SUPERMARKET SWEEP Here's the lowdown on Asda's opening hours over the Easter weekend
Are there any other Easter dates to look out for?
Lent spans for 40 days, and there are numerous events celebrated in the Christian calendar during this holy period.
Here are all the Easter-related festivities to look out for…
Palm Sunday – March 25
Spy Wednesday – March 28
Maundy Thursday – March 29
Good Friday – March 30
Holy Saturday – March 31
Easter Sunday – April 1
Easter Monday – April 2
Before heading to Flores in eastern Indonesia for an Easter pilgrimage, I didn’t quite know what to expect. Would it be the blood and gore of a Filipino Good Friday stations of the cross with real crucifixions? Or would it include wildcard elements of Indonesia’s animistic past?
Or would it be like milder Easter celebrations of my Australian Catholic youth – where the tallest boy in the class dressed like Jesus and dragged a cross that we’d made in woodwork around the town streets?
A look at the itinerary filled my heart with terror. There was so much churchgoing that at first I thought there had been some mistake.
Good Friday in Indonesia's Catholic enclave, Larantuka – in pictures Read more
Good Friday, for example, had us arriving at a church at 6am for the first mass of the day and returning to the hotel at 3.15 the following morning. That is more than 21 hours solid of churchgoing – more in one day, than I had done in the last 21 years.
We arrived, like many thousands of Easter pilgrims before us, after a long journey. To get to Larantuka – the Catholic heart of Indonesia – we flew from Australia to Denpasar and then to Kupang in Flores, the far east of Indonesia.
After that, it was a five-hour journey through a flyblown and tropical landscape, to the township of Larantuka. Situated on a narrow strip of land between the Ile Mandiri volcano and the Flores Strait, it is far from the tourist trail.
But, over Easter, this place is heaving.
We were in Larantuka to join 6,000 Catholic pilgrims for the religious festival of Semana Santa – a period that begins on Ash Wednesday and reaches its crescendo on Good Friday, the most sorrowful day of the Catholic calendar.
As a child, I had observed an Australian Irish Catholic Easter – strict enough with several masses over four days, no meat on Friday and the stations of the cross, but I expected to be subjected to a strong mix of horror and boredom in Indonesia.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A soloist, tasked with singing a psalm at each station of the cross during the Good Friday service and processions. Photograph: Anthony McKee
Accommodation in the town is basic – many families billet pilgrims. We were housed in a rundown hotel that was little more than concrete breezeblock, rooms cell-like, without running water.
Arriving late at night on Holy Thursday, on the terrace of the hotel was a strange sight: an Englishman in rumpled white linen and broad brimmed hat, with an expensive camera by his side. It was a throwback to colonial times: Malaya and Maugham, Kipling and gin and tonics fizzing and the ice melting madly in the sun. Later he told me that it was not he who was the strange sight – it was us, an Aussie press pack, used to perhaps more luxury junkets or at least hotels with running water – being told that no, this is where we were staying.
“The horror on your faces when you were told about the bucket shower!” he laughed.
The heat in Larantuka was almost extreme, brutal and somehow managed to be dry yet humid at the same time. Sweat ran off us in gallons, the sun was fierce and applied itself to the skin like a blowtorch and there was no breeze despite our nearness to the sea.
Who will we crucify this Easter? Same as always: those who defy power and privilege Read more
Before we left Australia, we were instructed to pack an all-black outfit for Good Friday – something modest with sleeves to represent the sorrow of the day.
According to our guides and our very learned new English friend (ex-BBC by way of the foreign office) the Easter procession has been going for 500 years. Back then, east Flores was on the spice route and became a hotspot for Catholic missionaries.
Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam had never reached this far east of the Indonesian archipelago, but thanks to the arrival of Portuguese missionaries, Larantuka is now 90% Catholic compared with around 3% throughout the rest of Muslim-majority Indonesia.
Prior to the introduction of Catholicism, Flores was animistic. But one day, in the late 1560s, local legend goes, a statue of a woman washed up on the beach and was found by a local fisherman. Written on the sand was “Renya rosary”.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Leading the procession of boats is a small canoe tasked with carrying a small box of religious artefacts from one church at the north of Larantuka to another in the south. Photograph: Anthony McKee
The statue was kept safe in a local temple. A few years later the Portuguese turned up in this part of far eastern Indonesia and recognised the statue as Mary, the mother of Jesus. They claimed the statue was a miracle, although it was likely it came from the wreck of a Portuguese ship. Two more religious statues found their way to the town (in mysterious circumstances) where they remain today.
For 500 years, they have been shrouded in cloth and paraded through town each Easter week. These relics form the core of the Semana Santa and were instrumental in turning this part of Indonesia from animistic to Catholic.
Pilgrims had begun arriving in town on Wednesday. I met some from as far away as the US and Germany, as well as Catholic Indonesians who worked as domestics abroad in places such as Dubai and Malaysia.
The king of Laruntuka, Don Andre III Marthinus Diaz Vieira de Godhinho, opened the doors of the Tuan Ma (Mother Mary) Chapel and on Holy Thursday night, hundreds of devotees flocked to the Senhor Chapel to kiss the “feet” of Jesus and visit the graves of loved ones.
Information about the mysterious statues was 'taboo' and we weren’t allowed to see them or ask questions
The next morning, we started with a starchy breakfast: boiled rice and oven-baked potato chips and tomato pasta – no meat of course. The Good Friday procession began early.
All in our black outfits, ready to be bussed into the religious zone, we looked like casually employed waiters at a downmarket function centre. While we managed to be in black, nothing matched; some wore satin, some wore lace, some wore cotton. Our sleeves were at different lengths. Most of us wore hats to ward off the worst of the sun.
We joined thousands and thousands of people all in black wearing t-shirts that bore the legend Semana Santa 2017, with the words Tuan ma and a picture of Mary – the gothic script on black making it look like a heavy metal concert t-shirt.
In our black clothes we were vectors of the radiant heat. All of us in turn were told to take our hats off – it was disrespectful – particularly if worn in the chapels. “But ... But … sunburn!” By 11am we were all soaked in sweat and dreaming of our terrible hotel – peeling off the black clothes, the cool shock of the bucket shower, the hard bed with its soft pillow.
We were following the Semana Santa version of the stations of the cross – which involved the relics shrouded in cloth being taken from one of the eight armidas (stations) to the next. Many of the thousands we were walking with were young – Indonesians in their 20s.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A woman prays before a crucifix in Larantuka Cathedral. Photograph: Anthony McKee
On one station we ran along the water’s edge for a good view as the relics (a small casket that contains a rosary) were loaded onto a boat and went out with a crowded flotilla of fishing boats in a sea-borne procession that took 90 minutes to complete. The boatmen still use oars and are followed on the water by pilgrims in smaller boats. Some of the boat drivers were Muslim and we were told by our guides that the two religions coexisted peacefully in the area.
But for outsiders such as ourselves, much of what was happening was confusing. Why the black clothes? And what is difference between an armida and the stations of the cross? Why are the statues worshipped? How much animism has mingled with the Catholic rites? What does it all mean? And, after many hours of this, when will it all end?
We had two guides, Raphael and Hans, but they could only help us so much. They were reluctant to spill the beans on the ancient rituals because they said it might bring bad luck. They told us information about the mysterious statues was “taboo” and we weren’t allowed to see them or ask questions.
Somehow the long, hot day finished and we went back to the hotel for a bowl of boiled rice. But that was only the warm-up for the main event.
At night we gathered in the centre of town to continue the procession. This – in terms of aesthetics – the chanting, vestments and solemnity – resembles the Easter processions of Catholic Spain. There are no crucifixions, Filipino style. It’s a family parade.
It was a weird experience being in the procession: by turns boring, profound, confusing, mesmeric and meditative
To our surprise, we journalists were to march in the parade alongside the devout, the priests, nuns and the bishops. “My parents would be proud,” I thought, as I took my undeserved place behind a group of Indonesian and east Timorese clergy.
It was a weird experience being in the procession: by turns boring, profound, confusing, mesmeric and meditative. It took seven hours to walk the full five kilometres. The streets were treacherous, slick with candle wax in shiny, slippery pools on the ground. The candles themselves were wheeled in trolleys: moving and flickering banks of light.
The rhythm of the night was really only known to those who had done this before. We followed, dropping to our knees when everyone else did, chanting some lament when it seemed rude not to. Families lined the street and gravely watched us – their own candles adding to the waxy mess on the road.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The opportunity to carry the box of artefacts is considered a high honour, and an opportunity to be forgiven for past sins. Photograph: Anthony McKee
We saw our English friend at some point – still in white linen – moving swiftly around the crowd with his camera, he gave us a quick wave. There were shrines on the way – paintings of Jesus festooned with fairy lights.
The wax on the ground was becoming problematic, the bishops ahead kept stopping for water and eyed us without curiousity. Group of tiny nuns took selfies.
Apart from the clergy, the most devout-looking participants were women. Some wore mantillas and wept, not wildly but softly, for hours as the processions wound on through the streets. They let candle wax drip over their hands and fingers and did not remove it. The following day all the wax is collected from streets and remelted to be used for next year’s parade.
Their identity concealed behind their robes, they were both menacing and mesmerising to watch.
We skipped ahead to the front of the procession via a waiting vehicle. The head of the procession was an extraordinary sight. There was a woman singing a lament in a blue dress – a stand in for Mary? And sensationally a group of hooded men carrying something on a raised platform.
Unfortunately, the hooded men looked like clansmen, in the light of the flickering candles with their white robes, crosses and pointed hats. They were actually local men, penitents who had sinned that year and wanted to repent. Their identity concealed behind their robes, they were both menacing and mesmerising to watch.
For me, at some point in the night, time and space fell away. Who knew what was under the shrouds and why it was taboo? The parade itself seemed not a facsimile of Good Friday – or the Good Fridays I had known (boredom and fish fingers for dinner, the video store closed) – but closer to the raw sorrow, pain and horror, and length, of that actual day. The Son of God had been crucified, and it was not an easy death.
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Even if you do not believe anymore (or perhaps never did), it is worth acknowledging the horror and violence of this particular part of the Bible. The crucifixion is the dark heart of Catholicism from which the grand miracle – resurrection – springs.
In Larantuka, Good Friday is given its full emotional and spiritual expression. The sleepless vigil of the night before and the long day in the heat with the prayers and the queueing in the sun. And then the night, endless steps and wailing and tears and men in robes and the thrown shadows of torches and the sorrowful faces, lit by candles that lined the way.
By Alexis Johnson | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
Good Friday falls on March 30 this year, a holiday symbolizing the day that Christians believe Jesus Christ was crucified. The holiday is followed by Easter Sunday which honors the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the Christian faith.
Passover also begins on the evening of March 30. It ends on the evening of April 7.
Good Friday is becoming the new Black Friday, analysis shows, as hard-pressed retailers are dropping prices by up to 70pc over the weekend.
Experts are predicting a record Easter shopping bonanza with sales expected to rise by 3 per cent compared to last year for the sixth year in a row, according to consumer analysts at KPMG.
After a period of weak sales shops are luring consumers back onto the high street in time for the four-day break with even bigger discounts than last Black Friday, data shows.
The British Retail Consortium said the influx of extreme Easter offers were "fundamentally shifting the traditional cycle of seasonal promotions”, as retailers struggled to entice customers.
Six in ten retailers currently have items on sale according to analysts at IbisWorld, with stores including Argos, Curry's Debenhams and Topshop deploying specifically named "Easter sales".
