The proposal to revise Bank Holidays is interesting. It is
seventy- seven years since Lord Avebury, then Sir John Lubbock, M.P., achieved immortality (which he might, no doubt, have gained on other counts) by inventing the August Bank Holiday and thereby earning the gratitude of millions of Hs contemporaries and of alt posterity (in these islands). What interests me most is the support given to the demand for the fixing of Easter by application of the Act to that effect which was passed twenty years ago but needs an Order in Council to put it into operation. By that measure Easter Day would always be celebrated on the second Sunday—or, to be strictly accurate, on the Sunday after the second Saturday—in April, and Whit Sunday would naturally be just seven weeks later. For that reform there seems to be everything to be said and nothing to be said against. I observe that the second Sunday in June is proposed for Whit Sunday, but there would naturally be strong ecclesiastical objection to varying the historic interval of seven weeks between Easter and Pentecost. Whether it is desirable to push the August Bank Holiday into September seems questionable, though no doubt it would better break the long interval between Whitsun and Christmas. However that may be, I hope the public demand for a fixed Easter, with all the conveniences that would entail, and all the inconveniences it would avoid, will be pushed home well and hard.
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