Easter vacation

“ They will be expected to dispense with all vacations except a week at Christmas, five days at Easter, and a fortnight from the first to the fifteenth of October. They will devote their entire time to the service of the State, both day and night. ”

“ Years passed; my holidays and the seasons succeeded one another with regularity. Summer and the green poplars and my Uncle Spencer’s amiability gave place to the cold season of sugar-making, to scatological symbols in chocolate, to early darkness and the moral gloom of my Uncle Spencer’s annual neurasthenia. And half-way between the two extremes came the Easter holidays, pale green and hopefully burgeoning, tepid with [74] temperate warmth and a moderate amiability. There were terms, too, as well as holidays. Eastbourne knew me no more; my knowledge of the globe expanded ”

“ The peculiarity of our attitude towards Christmas, which at worst is a vacation, may be clearly seen by contrasting it with our attitude towards another vacation—the summer holiday. We do not have to brace and force ourselves up to the enjoyment of the summer holiday. ”

“ The vacation in the West proves "the best ever" for the Easterners, and in recounting their pleasures they tell of the hundreds of miles of horseback riding, how they climbed mountains, trapped a bear, shot gophers, fished, camped, homesteaded, and of the delightful hospitality of Virginia and her friends. ”

“ SIR,—The suggestion of your Correspondent "EASTER EGG," who wishes Easter to be a fixed festival, always coming on April 20, is excellent. At present, Easter-tide, like the other tide, depends on the moon. ”

“ Must really decide where to go for five or six days at Easter. Weather always awful. Usual Springtime. North-east wind, frost, snow and dust. Something like last week. Can't stop in London. One Sunday or Bank Holiday in London mournful enough. ”

“ One can just sit without a fire. Presently, all will be green and gay; for winter is here the season of flowers, and the heaths will cover the country with a vast Turkey carpet. Already the green is appearing where all was brown yesterday. To-day is Good Friday; and if Christmas seemed odd at Midsummer, Easter in autumn seems positively unnatural. ”

“ Is there a cold, resentful bank wherein the late snow lingers that shall not finally cast off its disdainful ice and flash into verdure in response to the patient shining of the sun? Is there a grave in all the land so new and desolate that Easter time cannot find a violet among its clods and paint a rainbow within the tears that rain above it? To nature's lovers, then, as to the truly [27] Christian heart, the significance of Easter is found in the reviving garden and in the awakening woods. ”

“ There is a generally accepted notion that a brief summer vacation, if at all obtainable in this busy life of ours, must be spent in a flight as far afield as time will allow; that the popular resorts in the mountains, by the seaside, or on the margins of the upper lakes must be sought for rest and enjoyment; that neighborhood surroundings should, in the mad rush for change of air and scene, be left behind. ”

“ It was a glorious sparkling Easter Day, lovely blue sky above, herbage and flowers glistening below, snow dazzling in the hollows, peasants assembling in holiday garb, and all rejoicing. Even the lonely widow, in her heavy veil and black mufflings, took hope back to her heart, and smiled when at the church door a little child came timidly up to her with a madder-tinted Easter egg—a gift once again like the happy home customs of Ulm. ”

“ When the snows began to melt, the children and young people heralded the approach of Spring with song. Joining hands, they wandered singing in the twilight, a lovely, living chain of Youth in its Spring-time. They repeated these songs at Easter, that wonderful festival of Resurrection and the rebirth of Nature. On Holy Thursday the Gospels were read in the churches until midnight, and everyone carried a taper. My mother’s estates were situated in the mountains, and it was a picturesque sight when the peasants wended their way churchwards at Easter. ”

“ This Festival is the counterpart of Easter—telling of Death, as Easter does of Resurrection; and as God has given to the latter, the reviving blossom and the sweet Spring-time; so He has set the former in the Autumn, and strewed the sere leaves in our path to Church, as its becoming symbol. ”

“ An Austrian official report on over-pressure in the public schools recommends as a remedy for the evil, which is pronounced real, a better division of the holidays by giving longer vacations at Christmas and at Easter ”

“ The day of its arrival they call their Easter, and they do not hold Easter according to the calendar in the dark and terrible spring, but postpone their holiday till life is born again with the coming of the ship. ”

“ On Easter Sunday every one in the union breakfasts on eggs and dines on fresh meat. Easter Monday is a great holiday here, and multitudes go into Scattery Island this day for the purpose of performing penance on their bare knees round the stony beach and holy well there. ”

“ However, Lent once passed, with its sewing circles and small whist-parties, then comes the brilliant Easter, with its splendid dinners, its weddings, its christenings and caudle parties, its ladies' lunches, its Meadow Brook hunt, its asparagus parties, and the chickens of gayety which are hatched out of Easter eggs. It is a great day for the confectioner. ”

“ Even in mellow English country homes Easter-tide is a period of rawness and atmospheric acridity—the moment at which the frank hostility of winter, which has at last to give up the game, turns to peevishness and spite. This is what makes it arbitrary, as I said just now, for "easy" people to go forth to the wind-swept lawns and the shivering parks. ”

“ Thus it came to pass that religion and the Church appropriated so many of Nature's festivals; that the Roman Saturnalia became our precious Christmas, the full-moon spring equinoctial feast grew into our beautiful Easter, and the harvest feast took the form of a Thanksgiving service.
These changes suggest the function and future of holidays in the light of their origin. As shown above, the psychical growth of man from an emotional to an intellectual creature has almost entirely changed the function of holidays. ”

“ Far from this foreign Easter damp and chilly
⁠My soul steals to a pear-shaped plot of ground,
Where gleamed the lilac-tinted Easter lily
⁠Soft-scented in the air for yards around;
Alone, without a hint of guardian leaf! ”

“ This Easter sun will rise on you, dear child, "feeling your life in every limb," and eager to rush out into the fresh morning air——and many an Easter-day will come and go, before it finds you feeble and gray-headed, creeping wearily out to bask once more in the sunlight——but it is good, even now, to think sometimes of that great morning when the "Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings." ”

“ It is quite true that almost every Easter Sunday morning in our parts we have fine, bright sunshine, but this is due to the fact that at that season of the year everything in the ground is springing out fresh and green, and the warm heat of summer is approaching. When I was a little boy of about nine or ten years of age, I was often told that if I got up very early on Easter Sunday morning, I would see the sun dancing with a lamb, a cross, and a bird on its face. ”

“ She'll have a holiday at Easter, from the Thursday night to Monday night, and I have all but got her to promise that she'll come over here. Wouldn't it be fun to let her see the Black Country? You remember her talk about it. I could get her a room, and if it's at all bearable weather, we would all have a day somewhere. ”

“ This weekend, many of our service men and women are celebrating the holidays far from home. They are separated from their families by great distances, but they are always close in our thoughts. And this Passover and Easter, I ask you to keep them in your prayers. ”

“ In holiday time, in the summer, at Christmas and at Easter, they were allowed to run quite wild, in old clothes at some out-of-the-way seaside place, in country farmhouses, where they scrambled about on ponies and amongst ducks and chickens, or in the country houses of their friends and relations, where there were other children of their age for them to play with. ”

“ Warm but fresh—how could it help being fresh in that pure mountain air, which turned Sunny’s cheeks the colour of opening rosebuds, and made even papa and mamma feel almost as young as she? Big people like holidays as well as little people, and it was long since they had had a holiday. ”

“ All books are laid aside, and picnics in the country are the favourite holiday pastime. Many of the city families erect tents by the side of a large river or lake, and stay there during the summer vacation. ”

“ Easter-tide, or the week following Easter, was a period of such exuberant merry-making that the people popularly imagined that their own mood was shared by the heavenly bodies, and believed that the sun actually danced with joy on the day of the Resurrection. ”

“ Yet how can there be a vacation without mountains, or seashore, or the fields, or the forests—days out of doors? My ideal vacation would have to be spent in the open; and this book, the larger part of it, is the record of one of my summer vacations—the vacation of the summer of 1912. That was an ideal vacation, and along with my account of it I wish to give you some hints on how to make the most of your summer chance to tramp the fields and woods.
For the real lover of nature is a tramp ”

“ The affairs of the nation and the rearing of orphans are alike delegated to the background while we paddle about among the lily pads of this delectable lake. I look forward with reluctance to 7:56 next Monday morning, when I turn my back on the mountains. The awful thing about a vacation is that the moment it begins your happiness is already clouded by its approaching end. ”

“ Probably the Easter celebration is like that at Christmas and Thanksgiving—a survival of some ancient pagan rite that men established out of overflowing hearts, rejoicing at the end of a good season and praying for favour at the beginning of a new one. ”

“ WINTER TRAVEL AFOOT FROM the standpoint of pure pedestrianism winter travel usually has but little appeal yet it represents to the uninitiated marvelous revelations in scenic display, for the sedentarian, who is housed in the vitiated air of stuffy steam heated offices, a stimulation to the highest degree of physical well being, and, being feasible, projects one’s vacation opportunities to include the year around. ”

“ The long vacation is that of our venerable universities, originally designed for allowing poor scholars to beg and to take part in the all-important labours of ingathering the harvest; between July 1 and October 1{157} being the busy time at home: moreover, the lads have a long and a hard way to travel. ”

“ In chalking out a summer holiday trip, one likes to get quite away from the ordinary round of daily life and business. Half the benefits of such a trip consists in getting out of the old ruts, and breathing fresh air amidst new surroundings. ”

“ While you are spending the bright hours of Easter-week in gladness and rejoicing, you will like to read how the same great festival is being celebrated by the little folks whose home is in the Holy City where our Lord himself once dwelt. ”

“ The church makes up amply in the Easter festival for any lack of participation at New Year. Forty-eight days of rigid lenten abstinence, during which time no meat is eaten, precede the festivities of Easter Day. The first two or three days of the Holy Week are given over to housecleaning, which however must be finished by Thursday in order that the people may attend the ceremonies at church which continue until Easter Day. ”

“ How would you like to spend a summer vacation on an uninhabited island off the Maine coast,—not alone, of course, but in company with a few chosen chums, all good fellows in their way and all of them ready for any sort of sport or adventure that might be found or borrowed? Surely, such a vacation would provide plenty of good fun, as well as some troubles and annoyances; but no vigorous, high-spirited American boy would mind a certain amount of inconveniences when he sets out to have a good time on a camping trip. ”

“ All, all the dead, the near, the far, take part in Easter day!
They share the life we hope to share, as once they shared in this;
They hold in fast possession our heritage of bliss.
Theirs is the sure, near Presence toward which we reach and strain;
On Easter day, on Easter day, we all are one again.
Oh, fairest of the fair, high thoughts that light the Easter dawn!
Oh, sweet and true companionship which cannot be withdrawn!
“The Lord is risen!” sealed lips repeat out of the shadows dim;
“The Lord is risen,” we answer back, “and all shall rise in him!” ”

“ It must not be supposed that the camping season is past because the summer vacation is over. The real camping season begins in the Wild Rice Moon, that is, September. Even if school or business takes all our time during the week, we still have week-ends in which to camp. ”

“ If it is an exhibition you go to gape at, we never picture you dragging your weary legs from one department to another, and wondering why your back is so sore. Should it be the seaside, we talk heartlessly to you about the "briny," though we must know, if we would stop to think, that if there is one holiday more miserable than all the others, it is that spent at the seaside, when you wander the weary beach and fling pebbles at the sea, and wonder how long it will be till dinner time. ”

“ Day dies out. Far away, behind the gardens of the Résidence, lingers a glimmer of the departing sun, red in the fog; and in the town is such gaiety, such hurry of preparation for the holiday, that each jet of light which springs up in the many windows seems to hang from some vast Christmas-tree. ”