When Al Jolson (Al, who?) sang “April Showers” for the first time back in 1921, the audience at the Broadway musical “Bombo” roared its approval (after all, it was the Roaring 20s.) The tune was easy to carry, whistle, and hum. It was an innocuous little ditty that defined the fourth month of the year for generations.
Bing Crosby (Bing, who?), Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra, as well as a score of other American pop vocalists of the last century, trilled the Buddy DeSylva lyrics into the receptive ears of millions agog over the new era of radio and phonograph records.
Reading the song’s lyrics today, one could easily raise questions about the amount of rain in April, the number of flowers in May, and most surely dispute that “it isn’t raining rain, you know, it’s raining violets.” (Nice thought, but meteorologically impossible!)
But what is indisputable is that “April Showers” is a ballad of hope:
“And where you see clouds upon the hill, you soon will see crowds of daffodils; so, keep on looking for a bluebird and listening for his song whenever April showers come along.”
Reflecting on the hopeful words of this lighthearted, more than a century-old song in a world that has been enveloped ever since by ominous clouds of despair, may be worth considering this April (and every other month, as well) as we listen for a blue bird’s song.
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Sharing a few noteworthy moments of Aprils past.
Every April 15th (April 18, this year) the most taxing day of the year, many of us suffer the sinking feeling that is part of the privilege of being an American: filing our annual income tax returns. But on April 15, 1912 there was a truly horrific sinking: The White Star Liner Titanic, the widely heralded but doomed luxury ship that crashed into an Atlantic iceberg the night before, went to its watery grave along with more than 1500 souls.
On a much happier April 15th note, I’m loving it to tell you that McDonalds opened its first restaurant in 1955 in Des Plaines, IL, and that the same date in 1452 was painted into history with the birth of Leonardo DaVinci.
On April 16, 1862, President Lincoln signed an act abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, a forerunner to the Emancipation Proclamation. Sadly, on April 16, 2014, a South Korean ferry capsized taking the lives of 326 of its 338 people aboard.
April 17, 1937 was a date movie cartoon fans had something to quack about with the screen debut of Daffy Duck, and on April 18, 1934, “clean freaks” put a few coins into the world’s first Laundromat in Fort Worth, TX.
On April 26, 1944, federal troops seized the Chicago offices of Montgomery Ward and ousted its chairman for not obeying an order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt to recognize a CIO union. On the same infamous date in 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Russia fatally exploded unleashing a radioactive cloud that eventually covered most of Europe.
On April 27, 1865, another explosion (the Steamship Sultana) caused the worst steamship disaster ever in the United States, killing more than 2000 passengers, mostly Union soldiers that were prisoners of war returning home.
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The glorious Feast of the Resurrection. The ultimate victory over death. The annual springtime of the soul. The centerpiece of the Christian faith. The day that children gleefully scoop up colored eggs hidden on the lawn. The appearance of a larger-than-life bunny delights children of all ages. A time for the landed, and not-so-landed, gentry to parade their new finery. In a word: Easter.
Christians worldwide celebrate the day with pomp and circumstance, flowers and trumpets, prayers, and praise, and hope in their hearts.
At the same time, others scoff at the observance of Easter, and the validity of the 2000+ years-old “story” about a humble Nazarene prophet that was crucified, died, was buried, descended into hell, and rose from the tomb on the third day.
The “story” that is the epicenter of the Christian faith is still under attack today (books, movies, TV, social media, in the workplace, in schools, and homes of neighbors and friends) by a multitude of non-believers, quasi-believers and fragile faithful.
Fictitious tomes like “The DaVinci Code,” “Origin,” “The Gospel of Judas,” “Jesus of Morris Street,” “The Autobiography of Jesus of Nazareth,” and the “Missing Years,” and other works of like ilk, are a few cases in point,
Conversely, anointed leaders of flocks of believers throughout the world proclaim that the biblical story of Christ’s resurrection is “the real deal.”
But there is something about Easter that even strikes fear in the hearts of many clergy, sending them scrambling through their bookcases for passages to share with their congregations and parishes to make sense of Jesus’s resurrection from the dead.
The issue is how does one go about explaining that which is inexplicable? The simple answer is that it cannot be done… without putting a serious dent in one’s intellectual credibility.
The significance of the resurrection does not lie in the annual adoration of a certain sequence of events that is taught to be sacrosanct. Rather, it is to be found in the life-changing forces that were present that first Easter morning. Easter is God’s Day. There is nothing we can prove.
Therein is the true essence of the day.
The Last Word: Good day, good luck, good news tomorrow and Happy Easter!
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