I always thought it was kinda rude that they called it “Good Friday.*”
I mean, I get the spirit of it. But I can’t help feeling like we had a whole language of words to use here and we picked that specific one. So I can’t shake the mental image of Jesus having A Lot of Thoughts about that word choice every dang year.
*I’m mostly funning. The actual etymology relates more to the sense of piousness or holiness, which is less rude and more… boring? Like, you already call it “Holy Week.” We get it.
The 1955 reform of the Catholic Church’s Holy Week party called it “Feria sexta in Passione et Morte Domini” which is very long and sounds inappropriately horny. No good.
German-speaking countries go with “Karfreitag” or Mourning Friday. The Scandinavian and Finnish “pitkäperjantai” basically means Long Friday, which is a solid choice.
At any rate, the story goes that they arrested Jesus and started questioning him, to which he gave some serious sass:
High priest: "I adjure you, by the Living God, to tell us, are you the Anointed One, the Son of God?"
Jesus: "You have said it, and in time you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Almighty, coming on the clouds of Heaven."
He really gave them the ol’ “you said it, not me.”
The story goes that Jesus carried his cross from his sentencing to Golgotha and was crucified alongside two criminals. He was alive on the cross for six hours, the final three of which saw the area plunged into darkness – reportedly, noon to 3pm.
This all comes into play for how people celebrate (?) this holiday. Many gather for services around this time, with some pretty specific rituals (with some fantastic names). It’s an official, get offa work holiday in many places. (Interestingly, for Kentucky, it’s a state holiday half-day. Like… why?)
Where I’m from, it’s not uncommon to see congregations staging passion plays on Good Friday. My personal favorite is a church that recreates Jesus’s crucifixion in real time alongside a highway. (The actors often get tired, so they take shifts hanging on the cross.) It’s very Party City.
This year, Passover starts in the evening of Good Friday. The two don’t always coincide, but it makes for an interesting time in blended households.
Very importantly to only me, today also happens to be National Glazed Spiral Ham Day.