Happy Saturday!
April 4, 2010 5 Comments
Today is a weird day.
You know, we’ve got Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday, but what of Saturday? I’m sure it probably has a traditional name; the fannish authors of Christian dogma over the centuries are far too meticulous to leave such an obvious day unnamed and uncatalogued. But that name is at least uncommon enough that I’ve never heard it or seen it referenced anywhere.
If I were to offer a cynical suspicion, I’d say that Christians don’t want to draw attention to it. After all, this Saturday represents o e of the most obvious and silly contradictions in the Christian narrative. According to the story, Jesus was crucified sometime on Friday (exactly when depends on which gospel you read), buried in a cave where he lay for three days, and then resurrected on Sunday morning. No matter how you slice it, there’s no way to squeeze the necessary number of days out of that schedule. It’s a trivial mistake, only significant because of how much emphasis is placed on the “three days in the tomb” part of the story.
So I propose a name for this Saturday, a magical day that somehow became two: Lengthy Saturday. Go ye now and celebrate it in the traditional fashion: by pointing out the silliness and inconsistencies of the ‘inerrant’ book that serves as the foundation of monotheism. Just don’t forget that, regardless of the story, there’s still only 24 hours in this day, just like any other.
Dubito Ergo Sum 
I had also never heard a name before this year, when I heard someone try to pass it off as "Holy Saturday," which I immediately regarded as stupid and uncreative, as Catholics already refer to Maundy Thursday as Holy Thursday. I thought up the alternative "Hangover Saturday" because it seems logical that a bunch of unemployed fishermen who had just lost their livelihood on Friday would be pretty fucking hammered come Saturday morning.
I love it! I've always wondered about that seeming "day count" issue. I just assumed that, if you start really early on Friday and then assume the resurrection happened late on Sunday, believers could say that it was into the 3rd 24-hour period… hence the 3 days.It wouldn't be out of character with some of the other rationalizations I've heard to excuse contradictions and inaccuracies in the bible. :-)
I'm sure there's some apology for it. Like "days were longer back then" or some comparison to the six days in Genesis.They always find some way to believe no matter how dumb it is.
I'll start a splinter group that calls it "Lengthened Saturday." That way, we can have a schism!
I think a rather obnoxious fundie teacher at my Job Corps center tried explaining it away by claiming that there were differences between the Hebrew and Roman calendars or some such bullshit.