Life, 1911-04-06 · page 23 of 76
Life — April 6, 1911 — page 23: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from *Life* magazine presents a humorous essay criticizing how Americans inadequately observe Easter. The text argues that Easter, whether viewed religiously (as Christ's triumph over death) or secularly (as spring renewal), deserves proper celebration—yet Americans bungle it. The core complaint: Easter's floating calendar date makes planning impossible. Schools can't schedule spring breaks consistently; the weather is unpredictable; and Americans treat Easter casually, as a "double gamble" dependent on both the holiday's arbitrary timing and unpredictable spring weather. The illustration by J. Paul Burnham (credited at bottom) depicts a funeral scene captioned "For he was a jolly good fellow"—likely satirizing how Americans treat Easter superficially, focusing on hats and weather rather than genuine significance. The essay laments that America lacks the established religious traditions or predictable seasons that other countries enjoy, leaving Easter to be swallowed randomly by an erratic American spring that "pops out" then vanishes into summer.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Fister in this country is a great chance very imperfectly improved. Any way you look at it, it has in it re- markable elements of joy. If you are Christian and reasonably Orthodox, it stands for the triumph of the spirit over perishable mortality. If you are pagan it stands for what is very nearly related to that—for Spring and the new life in the earth, for life itself and its continuation and reproduction. It stands for hope, as Christmas stands for love, for joy, for beauty, for a fresh start for all hands and new endeavors after the beautiful and the good. 667 But we don't make much of it. There are diffi- culties about providing for it, it skips about so in the calendar, ranging back and forth, and bobbing up nearly a month earlier some years than others. That is troublesome. Schools and colleges find it so hard to adjust their Spring vacations to ter that most of them have given up trying. he Spring is a gamble at best and it would.be impossible to set a date in which Spring would be sure to keep an engagement even on a single parellel of American latitude, let alone on about forty of them. But the whimsics of Easter make it a double gamble to contract for the at- tendance of Spring on Easter Day. Perhaps if Easter was nailed to a definite day—say the first or second Sunday in April—we could do better with it. But as it is, no considerable preparation can be made to receive what ought to be the great Spring festival. It just happens along and takes pot luck with us. If the weather is good and fairly vernal, we welcome it with a millinery show, and if it strikes a blizzard, we turn our collars up and think how profitable Easter might be if it could only add to its theoretical charm a little punctual sense of metcorologi- cal responsibility. No doubt they do better in countries that have an estab- lished religion, in which Easter counts; also in countries that have an established Spring with definite bounds, Our American Spring is not so much a season as an episode that pops out when you're not looking, sputters like a fuse, and— bang !—it’s Summer. “yor we WAS a JoLLY coop FELtow.” comicbooks.com