There are many good things about the US’s written constitution: there’s the right of everyone to walk about with bare arms no matter what the weather, but even more important there’s no state religion. This past weekend was Pentecost: Whitsun if you’re British, Pfingsten if you’re German and Pinsen if you are Norwegian. In England Whitsun is a bank holiday as well as a Church of England thing and though tradition dictates that it will rain the entire weekend, everybody takes off. If it weren’t C. of E. — weren’t an event in the calendar of the state religion — but were Roman or Orthodox, Muslim or Jewish, it would be known as a ‘religious’ holiday, though that term works on the opposite principle of ‘bank holiday’. Whereas bank holidays are holidays for banks and the banks therefore close, religious holidays (holy days) are intended to be holidays from everything but religion, so everything else closes and the mosques, or whatever, stay open.
(Update: Picky has pointed out that Britain nowadays separates Pentecost and the first holiday of the summer. See his comment below the photographs and, below that, Des von Bladet tells you the Dutch word for Whitsun.)
Norway has a state religion; it’s a Lutheran country and although not many people go to church, people respect weekends like this past one and things go a bit quiet. Our neighbour, normally a slow-moving man, was racing to be finished mowing his grass before 5 p.m. when the church bells start ringing, even though I know for a fact he’s an atheist.
Here are some pictures of what we were doing. Some of us were indoors working on an art project of my wife’s:
Others walked around in the woods …
looking at the trees and …
smelling the air …
Some slept and occasionally barked:
While others de-barked
A Bad Guide 
Oh no no no, not so. Whit Monday was once a bank holiday in England, but the rising tide of secularism has swept it away. Nowadays (since the 70s, I think) we have Spring Bank Holiday – the last Monday in May – instead.
Thank you Picky, it just shows how long it’s been since I spent Whitsun in the old country. It’s admirable that you had the decency to make it a holiday for all and it shows you don’t need to have a written constitution to do the right thing (though it does help).
On the other hand, I much prefer ‘Whitsun’ as a name to the extremely prosaic ‘Spring Bank Holiday’. It makes me think it must have been introduced when Jim Callaghan was PM.
It was tweede pinksterdag here in Southwegia, and we observed the canonical Dutch observance of pinksterkamp.
No goats and not many rabbits this year, but lots of ducklings, and some of them still tiny and yellow and fluffy.
The British bank holidag was moved in 1971, and in my experience none of my contemporaries or juniors have the slightest idea what a Whit is or that it was ever a cause for celebration. (Translating it as Pentecost doesn’t help much, at least for Britishes.)
No, but Pentecost at least sounds religious, whereas Whisun sounds — well, like a bank holiday.
I’d no idea it was changed in ’71, I must have been asleep. That would make this thing an invention of Mr Heath’s; he was almost as dull as Callaghan, but fatter. Too bad he opted for ‘Spring Bank Holiday’ when he could have called it pinksterkamp.
What has Mrs Crown made? The picture is almost an optical illusion; the beautiful round I-don’t-know-what seems spliced into the room. It’s gorgeous, whatever it is! (It looks a bit like firebirds.)
Your goats smile.
Yes, it’s hard to see what it is or will be, which is back-lit mirrored glass, so you’re seeing lots of reflection. This is only one of four panels.
That’s right they do smile, especially Vesla.
I agree about the prosaic naming of the holiday (and Whitsun, which was once synomynous with rain-swept beaches and candyfloss, now means nothing whatsoever to most English folk) but it’s not as bad as the holiday on the first Monday of the month.
Once it was called May Day Holiday – full of maypoles and morrismen and the banner-waving proletariat. Now it is Early May Bank Holiday, for heaven’s sake.
That’s shocking. Can’t it be replaced by a Dutch name? I suggest ‘The Tweedy Pinkfest’.
Hurray, Hurray, the First of May
Outdoor * * starts today.
Though that would be rather a long name for a Bank Holiday.
The very first sentence of your post contains a wild misconception pretending to be a pun. US citizens have only the right to bear arms. As I saw somewhere in a newspaper article, bare arms – and, worse to say, bare chests – are now frowned upon in the States, at least in certain cities there. Not being covered by the Constitution, arms must now be covered by suitable clothing. Pasties are passé.
It seem that written constitutions are inimical to nakedness. It’s no accident that Greece has a written constitution, and that Athena was obliged to spring fully clothed from the forehead of Zeus. In contrast, topless waitresses are not a Whit out of countenance in the bars of Blighty. Mabel told me so, she once had a summer job there.
As Mabel would say, better to have bare arms than armed bears.
It doesn’t scan, with asterisks.
Hooray hooray, the first Moondag in May;
We’ve been fucking outside for n dags today.
(The Dutch, being foreigners at heart and mostly Calvinist to boot, do not appreciate the urgent need to adjust holidags so that they cannot possibly fall on weekends.)
I agree, the round whatever it is is magnificent. And there are to be four of them! Where will they go? The workshop (?) looks beautiful too.
They are a commission for a college; there are four images of four different chandeliers from famous places in Norway — some are seen from below, like this one, and others from the side. I’ll put up some photographs after they’re installed.
The picture makes this room look twice the size it really is, because of the reflection in the mirrored glass; but it’s the same room where I sit and write A Bad Guide and my comments at LH.
On Pentecost — or whatever it should be called — do you all speak “in tongues” at your place? Do you all speak all sorts of languages, enlightened by the Holy Siprit*? If so, is it the case for the goats as well? I’d really love to know what languages they spoke this year. Sumerian? Polynesian? Inuktitut? Linear B? French?
* as one Turk used to call It
Oh shit. Please bring back the Sutor, the one that talks turkey when it comes to concrete and stiches.
Thanks, we’ll put over the goats’ gate: Ici on parle Linear B.
Holy Siprit, that must have been a Cyprus thing.
Why on Earth would you want to arm bears?!!
Aren’t they dangerous enough as they are?!
Has Colbert taught us nothing?!
Our slyboots of a host seems to be implying that Americans are like armed bears. I’m sure he agrees with Colbert.
I wasn’t aware of this Colbert person before now, I first thought he must be a cartoon character. I can’t quite tell if he likes bears or dislikes them.
Perhaps we can agree on the right of bears to bear arms.
Stitch, not stich.
Siganus Sutor, writing from Sietch Tabr.
Sietch Tabr — never been there. I notice Grumbly has to do some traveling for his job too.
Holy Siprit, that must have been a Cyprus thing.
Hmmm? No, Mehmet was from mainland, Asian Turkey.
By the way, given that He, She and It may or may not exist, what should be use for the third part(y) of the Trinity? Are we allowed to say “It” when we speak of It? Or should we say “He”, even if It is a (sexless) ghost?
The Holy Spirit was originally female, appearing in the shape of a dove flying between the water and the heavens (“dove” is feminine in many languages).
The Holy Spirit was originally female
Even in French, where for me le Saint Esprit has been masculine for time immemorial? On Pentecost It materialised in the form of flames, not of a dove, didn’t it?
Incidentally, the expression “Holy Ghost” looks and has always looked weird to me. (I’m sure Holly will agree with me, no matter in which language, be it caprine, Martian or otherwise.)