Holy Clean Green Great Command Thursday
The Easter weekend kicks off with some inconsistent nomenclature.
Mar. 28 - Today is Maundy Thursday in the Christian anglosphere and Skærtorsdag here in Denmark. It’s the same holiday, commemorating the same events, but the names diverge.
The “Maundy” in the English name is derived from the Latin word for command (mandatum, from which we also get mandate). It emphasizes Jesus’ command to his disciples, after their last big meal together, to love one another as he has loved them. He issued that command shortly after washing their feet, which were obviously filthy.
The “Skær” in the Danish name has nothing to do with commands. Skær means pure, clean, innocent. The name emphasizes the cleansing and purifying act of Jesus’ washing his apostles filthy feet.
Funny what different people take away from the same thing.
On that long ago Passover Thursday, Jesus had what he knew would be his last big meal with his apostles. Before they ate, he washed their nasty feet and commanded them to love one another as he had loved them—a love he had proved by washing their disgusting feet.
He then established the act of communion by handing out bits of bread that he said were his flesh, and pouring wine that he said was his blood, and asking his apostles to remember him when they ate and drank.
Then they all went to a nearby garden to relax and digest. Jesus asked them not to fall asleep, but they all did. He asked God, his father, not to make him go through with the ordeal he knew awaited him, but then took it back.
The only apostle who hadn’t fallen asleep there in the garden was Judas, who had snuck off at some point earlier in the evening but suddenly popped up to give Jesus a kiss.
That was the signal for the temple guards to arrest Jesus and drag him off for trial, sentencing, torture, abuse, crucifixion, and burial. (And resurrection, but the temple guards didn’t know about that.)
There’s more to it than that ultra-condensed version, obviously, but we’re not doing theology or literary analysis here, so we’ll leave it at that. That’s the story of that Thursday some 1991 years ago.
“Command Thursday,” says the anglosphere.
“Clean Thursday,” says the Danish-speaking world. Also the Russian-speaking world.
Germans call it “Green Thursday,” emphasizing the larger theme of rebirth and renewal associated with the week (and its probable pagan relation to the vernal equinox).
To most of the romance language countries (France, Spain, Italy, etc), and in Japanese, it’s “Holy Thursday.”
To Poles and Greeks it’s “Great Thursday.”
No Christians anywhere call it “Footwash Thursday,” “Betrayal Thursday,” “Agony Thursday,” or “Eat Jesus Thursday” (which would probably be euphemized into “Communion Thursday”), even though those were obviously significant parts of the day.
To non-Christians the name for the Thursday before Easter is Thursday and the word for Easter is Sunday.
It was 170 years ago today that France and England declared war on Russia, joining forces with the Ottoman Turks in the Crimean War.
The Crimean War is best known for producing The Charge of the Light Brigade and Florence Nightingale.
It also produced about half a million deaths, most of them due to illness and infection. According to one source, Russia suffered 450,000 casualties out of an armed force of 889,000 men. The British suffered 22,000 casualties, the French 96,000, the Ottoman Empire 45,000, and the Kingdom of Sardinia 2200. Only about one in eight casualties came from combat.
(Casualties are not deaths. Other sources say things like “each side lost about 250,000 men.”)
Half a million men lost their lives in the Crimean War, but thanks to Alfred “That’s Lord to You” Tennyson most westerners’ familiarity with the war begins and ends with a single doomed maneuver that cost 110 British lives and 375 horses.
A mixup in military communications had resulted in the riders of the Light Brigade, led by James Brudenell (the Earl of Cardigan), charging across an open valley against a Russian artillery position that was basically invulnerable.
The mixup was apparently the fault of George Bingham (Earl of Lucan), whom the British Field Marshal Raglan had ordered to tell Brudenell—Raglan’s own brother-in-law—to lead his Light Brigade against an entirely different artillery position.
Bingham got mixed up, is all. There were Russian artillery positions all over. Could have happened to anyone. Fog of war and all that.
The second stanza of Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade immortalizes Bingham’s screw up:
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
The descendants of George Bingham are surely grateful for Tennyson’s having written “someone” instead of “Bingham.”
As Brudenell himself described the charge:
We advanced down gradual descent of more than three-quarters of a mile with the vomiting forth upon us shells and shot, round and grape, with one battery on our right flank and another on the left; and all the intermediate ground covered with the Russian riflemen; so that when we came to within a distance of fifty yards from the mouths of the artillery which had been hurling destruction upon us, we were, in fact, surrounded and encircled by a blaze of fire, in addition to the fire of the riflemen upon our flanks. As we ascended the hill the oblique fire of the artillery poured upon our rear; so that we had thus a strong fire upon our front, our flank, and our rear. We entered the battery—we went through the battery—the two leading regiments cutting down a great number of the Russian gunners in their onset. In the two regiments which I had the honour to lead every officer, with one exception, was either killed or wounded, or had his horse shot under him, or injured.
Of the Light Brigade’s 670 soldiers, 110 were killed and 160 were wounded.
Someone had blundered indeed.
(*cough Bingham cough*)
Also on March 28, but in 1930, Constantinople changed its name to Istanbul.
March 28 is the birthday of Reba McEntire (1955), Dianne Wiest (1948), Ken Howard (1944), Dirk Bogarde (1921), and Anheuser Busch, Jr. (1899).
(It was also Queen Ingrid's Birthday in Denmark, but she’s dead, so no holiday.)
Enjoy the day, be it Holy or Clean or Command or Green or Great or just plain Thursday.
And keep those feet clean.
© 2024, The Moron's Almanac