Chicago, Ill.
Why does Christmas always fall on the same day of the month, while the days celebrated in commemoration of Christ’s death and ascension change? I have submitted this question to several ministers and other learned persons without receiving a satisfactory answer.
Buscando.
Answer.—Christ was crucified on Friday, the 14th day of the Jewish month Nisan, and rose from the dead on the following Sunday. The 14th of Nisan was the Jewish “passover,” the day observed by them in commemoration of the sprinkling of their door-posts with the blood of the paschal lamb on the night when the “Destroying Angel” passed over the dwellings of the Israelites but smote the first-born of the Egyptians. As the year of the Jews is a lunar year, and the 14th of Nisan is always a full-moon day, the Christian Church, regarding the observance of the crucifixion of Christ as a substitute for the passover of the Jewish Church, determine Good Friday and Easter Sunday by the rules for reckoning the Jewish ecclesiastical year. Christmas, intended to commemorate the birth of Christ, had no connection with the ritual of the old church, and, like some two or three hundred other immovable feast days of the Church of Rome, many of them birthdays of saints, it was finally settled that it should be observed on a given day of the common calendar.
OMAHA INDIAN RESERVATION.
Boone, Iowa.
Isn’t it about time that the Omaha Indian Reservation was opened for settlement, under the act of Congress approved Aug. 7, 1882?
Granger.
Answer.—The same question, substantially, comes to The Inter Ocean at least once a week from one part of the country or another. In reply to an inquiry, the Acting Commissioner of the General Land Office recently wrote as follows: