Easter is soon to be tethered, like a telegraph pole on the year's wire or a pin on a musical-box cylinder where once it was a bird that sat where it would, or a child's trumpet. Other religions of course have their own celebrations still governed by the wax of the moon, but the Westernised Christian calendar will soon be like simple clockwork; nothing will precess, nothing will leap (except the four yearly 29th of February).
Why do we tie things down so? Our birth-dates we celebrate regularly, despite the apparent time between each party diminishing through life. Christmas has its annual blast and while I appreciate the importance of its timing precision from an accounting point of view, I see no reason to tether the birth of someone two millennia ago to a single date of convenience.
Our annual measure is not even alligned with anything of meaning. The soltices occur on the 21st or 22nd and, with exceptions, those are not even marked. Our seasons are a moveable feast of their own, and increasingly so. Out the window the advancing signs of spring ignore that we are only just past the "depths" of winter, and what is more, may soon be swiftly erased by the cold season's resurgence. Camelias are flowering madly. Daffodils, primroses and snowdrops overlap. My lawn grass has not paused.
When early man first erected a sighting stone to prompt his sowing he began all of this. We should live more by the signs; declare holidays when the flowers bloom and the skies are blue, rather than suffer these false rhythms. Work, by all means, indoors when the winds blow cold.
Who to blame? Not the man with his sentinel. Either the priest or the accountant (who is only a priest of the money cult in any case).
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