The City of Davenport, Iowa has celebrated Good Friday as an official holiday for many years. But a huge controversy erupted when the city administrator announced the day off as "Spring Holiday" instead of its more religiously significant title at the suggestion of the town's Civil Rights Commission.
"The City Council of Davenport was blindsided by this," Alderman Bill Edmond said Monday. "This was not brought before us. We had no opportunity to discuss it or vote on it. I can tell you that most of the council was pretty upset by it."
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"In a word, it's nuts," he said. "Why should a small percentage of the population tell the majority of the population not to celebrate a holiday because it's religious?"
Not to worry. The city assures it was an error, and that any official change to the names on the calendar would have to go through the council. And there's certainly nothing wrong with scheduling a holiday to coincide with Good Friday. That in itself doesn't strike me as a religious observance, so much as a well-administered religious accommodation.
And while I don't quite agree with Mayor Bill Gluba when he says "Good Friday falls into the same category" as Christmas, in terms of becoming a national secular holiday – is there any holiday more specifically religious than Good Friday? – I do figure he's right when he adds, "We’ve just got more important things to deal with."
