NORTH CAROLINA OPEN THREAD for Sunday, April 1st, 2018
151st Weekly Edition
This is a weekly feature of North Carolina Blue. We hope this regular platform gives readers interested in North Carolina politics a place to share their knowledge, insight and inspiration as we work on taking back our state from some of the most extreme Republicans in the nation. Please join us every week as we try to Connect, Unite and Act with our North Carolina Daily Kos community. You can also join the discussion in four other weekly State Open Threads.
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Please jump the fold for a little North Carolina History
Thanks for reading and contributing, have a great week!
North Carolina Easter History
When did North Carolina celebrate Easter Monday?
The Monday after Easter was made an official North Carolina holiday in 1935, but the tradition of the Monday holiday goes back further.As early as the late 19th century, residents of North Carolina were taking Monday off to “rest up from the holiday,” according to state history files.
Perhaps not too coincidentally, a baseball game between N.C. State College and Wake Forest College was traditionally played on Easter Monday, and one possible explanation for the Easter Monday holiday was that legislators wanted the day off to attend the game.
According to an essay by John Blythe, the assistant curator for the North Carolina collection of the UNC Chapel Hill Libraries: “For more than 50 years North Carolina celebrated the day after Easter — Easter Monday — as a state holiday. For Tar Heel baby boomers and Gen Xers the holiday meant a long weekend. And, perhaps, it raised some questions as to why they alone among the nation’s school children had the day off.
“But to earlier generations of North Carolinians, Easter Monday may well have occasioned a trip to Raleigh to watch the annual baseball match between the boys of Wake Forest College and North Carolina State College followed by an evening celebrating or drowning one’s sorrows — depending on the team you supported.”
Easter Monday Holiday
by Jo Ann Williford, 2006
The Monday after Easter, rather than Good Friday as in every other state, was a legal holiday in North Carolina for 52 years. The bill establishing the holiday was introduced by Senator Paul Davis Grady of JohnstonCounty and was ratified on 19 Apr. 1935.
Although no written documents support the claim, oral tradition has long maintained that the reason North Carolina celebrated Easter Monday was to afford fans a greater opportunity to attend the North Carolina State-WakeForest baseball game, which for many years was played the Monday after Easter. The law was amended in 1987 to observe the holiday on Good Friday rather than Easter Monday.
First American Easter sunrise service was in North Carolina
In 1773, America's first Sunrise Service — an Easter Mass held early enough for congregants to witness the dawn's first rays together — was held in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, organized by the Moravians — a church with its roots in the present-day Czech Republic.
The service is held to mark the empty tomb that greeted Mary as dawn broke on Easter morning. Since then, such celebrations have been held in such diverse and scenic venues as the Hollywood Bowl (which celebrates its 88th service this year), the Lincoln Memorial and Colorado Springs' Garden of the Gods.
Remembering the April Republican Fools from 2013
April Fools in North Carolina pursue state religion
April 3, 2013
Without intended irony on April Fools' Day, Republican Rowan County Reps. Harry Warren and Carl Ford introduced House Joint Resolution 494 to establish a state religion in North Carolina. Unbelievably, the bill has already attracted 12 other equally ignorant sponsors. It’s no joking matter that 14 people who have absolutely no understanding of our Constitution have been elected state legislators.
Someone needs to tell these legislative Rip Van Winkles that under the 14thamendment adopted in 1868, state citizens have the same protections under the federal Bill of Rights as federal citizens: “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, reading “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise there of . . .” also means “State legislators shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Thomas Jefferson’s “wall of separation between church and state” extends to state as well as federal citizens.
Bonus: Pranks for an April 1st Easter
Jelly beans in an ice dispenser
Wrapped grapes instead of chocolate
Plastic eggs with cauliflower, broccoli or something else the kids will be sure to love.
Fill some plastic eggs with slime instead of candy.
Crushed Oreos without filling, small, clean planter, clean fake plant. Cover the hole in the planter, place the plant, fill with crushed Oreos, decorate with Easter bow. At the moment of your choice, start eating the cookie “dirt”.
Thanks again for reading, Happy Easter!