Sir, – Surely the time has come to cease our annual commemoration of the 1916 Rising at Eastertime and move it instead to the actual anniversary of the Rising’s outbreak, April 24th. That was the date of Easter Monday in 1916, and the Rising was modelled explicitly (some would say, blasphemously) on the original Easter story – the principle being that, like Christ’s death and resurrection, the blood sacrifice of the rebels would lead to the redemption and resurrection of the Irish nation.
But do we want to perpetuate this specious interpretation of the Rising? Better to free ourselves from such mythologising. The commemoration of the Rising at Eastertime only serves to reinforce the mythology. – Yours, etc,
FELIX M LARKIN,
Cabinteely,
Dublin 18.