He Is Risen!: Wandering through the mainstream media's coverage of Good Friday and Easter Sunday in search of news

Feature

Home > 2001 > April (Web-only)

He Is Risen!

Wandering through the mainstream media's coverage of Good Friday and Easter Sunday in search of news

Ted Olsen

[ posted 4/1/2001 12:00AM ]

One of the problems compiling a Weblog about religion news the day after Easter—one that would also include any stories published on Good Friday and Holy Saturday—is that there's simply too many stories out there. It's time to get the site updated, and Weblog still has pages upon pages to go through. Unfortunately, though you can drown in a sea of Easter-themed articles, there's not necessarily much to report. Many are variations on "Christians celebrate Easter." Those can be informative, and it's nice to see how Eastern and Western Christians around the world celebrate the holiest of days (although some celebrations are better read about than seen). However, these stories lose their punch when you read them year after year after year.

Almost as repetitive is finding that one news hook that every news outlet hangs their coverage on. This year it was the calendrical coincidence that Western and Eastern churches celebrated Easter on the same day (usually, because Orthodox use the Julian calendar and Western churches use the Gregorian calendar, they are weeks apart). The anomaly ran on the front page of the Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, and many other papers (The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and others also ran the story.) The articles were interesting and well-reported, but it's not like East and West celebrating Easter on the same date is some kind of miracle. It happens about every four years. Granted, it hasn't happened since 1990, but it will swing around again in 2005. If you want to freak out the ecumenists, point out that after A.D. 2700, the Gregorian and Julian calendars will be so off from each other that East and West will never celebrate on the same date. But obviously we've got some time before that ...