In an article about the "solidarity" day we are all supposedly observing in France today (see also previous post) we discover that the reporter makes a couple of utterly bizzare statements:
But the end to a coveted day off — which would normally fall on Monday — has not gone down well among the leisure-loving French, and now a spectrum of workers across the country was preparing to stay off the job to protest the decision. [...]
Unlike other holidays, the traditional day off on the Monday after the Christian festival of Pentecost falls on the same week of the year, making it easier for groups and families to plan getaways or activities each year.
The first statement is just plain weird - a day that is called le lundi de Pentecôte or "Whitmonday" in English - is by definition on a Monday - otherwise it wouldn't have "monday" in the name. Kind of the way that Ash Wednesday always falls on a Wednesday and Good Friday always occurs on a Friday.
But then it gets worse because a few lines down we have the "...traditional day off on the Monday..." statment which contradicts the "normally" in the first bit. OK so you might just think that this implies the first statement was some kind of brainfart it that was all. But then it says "falls on the same week of the year" which is complete bunk and makes me wonder whether the journalist and his "fact checking editors" actually have a clue about the christian Calendar. Pentecost/Whitsunday is precisely 49 days after Easter (WhitMonday is therefore by basic sums 50 days after Easter) and Easter is the archtypical "movable feast" that is the source of 52000 google hits on the phrase not to mention a Hemingway story and countless quotes in countless boks, magazines and newspapers (and webpages).
Since Easter is a movable feast and one that can vary in a range of about 5 weeks in March/April the "falls on the same week of the year" is about as inaccurate a statement as it is possible to make. The fact that the next sentence points out that this year the French are feeling hard done by because May Day and VE Day were on Sundays this year makes this error even harder to fathom. Surely the point is that Whitmonday is always on a Monday and hence French (and other Europeans) can assume that the week it is in will always be a 4 day week at most? This sort of mistake would be unthinkable to a Christian hence the title to this post. If AP had any Christian in any position that checked this story they would be bound to have picked up on this howler.
In a somewhat related way the Weekly Standard has a great article this week about the influence of the Bible on Western thought and the likely consequences for the fact that US (and UK) schools tend to eschew it - even as a work of literature, which it most certainly is, whether or not you agree with the content. It is a clear sign of just how much the educational establishment has failed to teach the author and his editors about the religion that is the bedrock of European culture that they are unable to grasp the basic structure of the Christian calendar. RA Heinlein wrote once
"A generation which ignores history has no past and no future."
I'm seeing a generation that has lost its past and that does not bode well for the future.