The Holiday Hallmark Can't Handle

Every year on Good Friday, I notice a peculiar feeling. When I'm out and about, riding the bus or shopping at a store, I feel a strange disconnect between myself and the world around me.

Outside, it's an ordinary day. The streets are busy, people are buying and selling, there are families in the parks and planes in the air. It's springtime in Atlanta, and already the earth's beauty is beginning to be seen.

Inside, things are different. I feel a sense of loss, a sense of a great drama taking place. This is the day on which we commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus. I cannot help thinking about it, at least from time to time. In the evening, my wife and I will go to church for a Tenebrae service, somber and sometimes even harsh. When it's over, the worshipers will leave in silence, totally unlike any other service of the year.

My awareness of Good Friday makes the very ordinariness of the city and the suburbs seem bizarre, remote, almost unreal. I have my mind on profound and solemn things; to some extent I am even mourning with Jesus' first disciples. The world around me takes no notice, utterly none. And that is as it should be.

Good Friday is the one Christian "holiday" that the wider culture, even in America, has not taken up. It is the one holy day whose Christian significance cannot be bleached out to leave a commercially viable residue. Christmas can be for children and families, for shopping, for feasting. Easter can be bunnies and baby chicks, the newness of spring and a whole lot of chocolate. Even a couple of days marked out to honor saints in some Christian traditions-Valentine, Patrick-have been pretty much entirely taken over by a culture of romance and hedonism, sex and shopping.

Not this day. There is nothing marketable about Good Friday. Suffering, sacrifice, injustice, betrayal-what's to celebrate? What's to shop for? Who could pig out on a day like that?

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