Season’s greetings
I shouldn’t let Easter pass by without commenting on it, but since I’m not really religious I don’t have anything to say. Then again, it’s more of a secular holiday these days (albeit a boring one).
Oh well. If in doubt, plagiarise. So here’s what good old Jack Curtin had to say about Easter in 1921:
Good Friday! What symbol is that day to Labor? See the Christ, the carpenter’s son, staggering up the steep and rugged slopes of Calvary, heaving the burden of a cross and watering the ground with His bloody sweat!
We do not desecrate. He who lived the life of the people, mingling with them, teaching them and easing their sorrows is the universal type of the perfect man, of the great internationalist. And to those who would resent our claiming him as such a symbol, we answer that He is not the property of any sect, but has a kinship with all who struggle for the emancipation of men from a world given up to the banalities of a sordid social and economic system. In that respect and not in any narrow theological sense do we appreciate this Easter season, drawing from it lessons and analogies that are heartening and inspiring to the last degree. For surely, Labor is crucified with a perpetual crucifixion, hung on a cross, the nails driven through its limbs and a crown of thorns on its head … Persecution, crucifixion, resurrection! That is the destined path.
I’ve always liked the Jesus-as-socialist-revolutionary analogy…
