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For Good Friday as a State Holiday

For Good Friday as a State Holiday

Last updated on: February 1, 2026 at 7:19 pm by Dan Peterson

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For Good Friday as a State Holiday 2026-02-01T19:19:17-07:00 Dan Peterson

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Groundhog Day 2005, in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. (Wikimedia Commons public domain photo) The second of February is a pivotal day in meteorological science each year and, of course, a major landmark in the history of American cinema

Fellow pilgrims, tomorrow — 2 February 2026 — is one of the most important dates of the year and is the inspiration for perhaps the greatest film ever made. Prepare yourselves accordingly. Observe it with the appropriate reverence and solemnity.

Tomorrow is also the day on which the second episode of Becoming Brigham will go up online. It’s an episode that I really like, so I hope that you’ll watch it. (I trust that you’ve watched Episode 1 by now. If not, please repent and get with the program!)

The three Tellys won by “Six Days in August” — two silver and a bronze — on display on the Interpreter Foundation’s table at the 2025 FAIR Conference. Photo by Steve Densley.

And, while films are on my mind: This story caught my interest a couple of days ago for more-or-less personal reasons: “Joe Rogan skips Golden Globes after refusing to pay entry fee for podcast award nomination: Podcast host declined to pay for an award nomination before Amy Poehler took home the inaugural prize.”

A while back, I mentioned here that Interpreter’s 2024 theatrical film Six Days in August had just won three 2025 Telly Awards — silver awards in the categories “Narrative Film” and “Historical Film” and the bronze Telly in the “People’s Choice” category. (A news release about the prizes appeared on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: “Six Days in August Wins Three Global Media Awards.”)

Inevitably, the announcement was met over at the Peterson Obsession Board with mockery and derision. They pointed out that a Telly isn’t an Oscar, that Tellys aren’t presented at the Cannes Film Festival, and that, anyway, we hadn’t won gold — thus, in a certain sense, joining such failed “Best Picture” Oscar nominees as the following in the dismal category of Worthless and Abject Losers:

The Wizard of Oz
The Great Dictator
Citizen Kane
The Magnificent Ambersons
The Ox-Bow Incident
Double Indemnity
It’s a Wonderful Life
Great Expectations
Sunset Boulevard
High Noon
Roman Holiday
The Caine Mutiny
Giant
12 Angry Men
To Kill a Mockingbird
How the West Was Won
Dr. Strangelove
Dr. Zhivago
Bonnie and Clyde
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Cabaret
Star Wars
The Fugitive
Saving Private Ryan
The Sixth Sense

Most damagingly, they then proceeded to allege that we had simply bought our Tellys and that, accordingly, the awards were not only meaningless but actually, accurately understood, quite embarrassing.

Personally, I knew nothing of the Telly Awards — had never so much as heard of them — until our 2021 theatrical film Witnesses won a bronze Telly. But I knew for a certainty that the Interpreter Foundation had submitted neither Witnesses nor Six Days in August to the Tellys, and I knew that we hadn’t paid any submission fees. (Being president of the Foundation, I have full access to our financial records.)

It turns out that it was the folks at Redbrick Filmworks who had submitted Six Days in August for consideration by the Tellys and who had paid the entry fee. And why on earth not? It’s their industry, after all. They’re professional filmmakers. They have a right to submit a film for a possible award, and an interest in doing so.

But submitting a film for consideration doesn’t guarantee that it will an award. And, as it happens, in the words of one of the principals at Redbrick:

Paying to enter is the case with 99% of all industry awards and festivals (and not just in the film industry). In fact, the only award I am aware of in the film biz that does not require an entry fee is the Academy Awards. Even the Golden Globes and the Emmys require an entry fee. There is nothing out of the ordinary — or untoward — about the process.

That’s why the story about Joe Rogan caught my attention. For a slightly fuller discussion of this matter, see my 11 June 2025 blog entry “In Defense Of My Friends.”

One candidate for “Golgotha,” as seen from near to East Jerusalem’s Garden Tomb and the Arab bus station. It’s the location that I’m inclined to favor. (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

From the Deseret News: “Utah could soon add another state holiday: Good Friday: Sen. Keven Stratton said making Good Friday a holiday is part of an effort to recognize ‘the great religious diversity that we have here in the state’”

I want to go on record as strongly favoring this proposal, SB193. I’ve written to Senator Stratton ([email protected]) and to my own state senator in its support.

In my particular case, I’m not thinking primarily about considerations of religious liberty — important as religious liberty is — nor about Utah’s religious diversity (although state recognition of Good Friday would, no doubt, be a positive gesture toward the state’s Roman Catholic population and many other Christian groups). Rather, I regard Easter as the most significant religious holiday on the annual calendar, and I also regret that it has been seriously neglected. Making Easter weekend a long weekend would go at least some distance toward redressing what I see as a theologically unjustifiable imbalance between Easter and Christmas. It would give people more time, if they chose to use it so, to contemplate the meaning of the Atonement and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and it would be a reminder of those two deeply important events. (Yes, yes, I know: Most would probably use it merely for barbecuing and waterskiing, or whatever.) Having Good Friday as an ordinary workday, though, unnoticed and unobserved, obscures the significance of the events that it commemorates.

I was pleased back in April 2023 to hear the General Conference admonition from Elder Gary E. Stevenson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles that we pay more attention than we typically have in the past to the celebration of Easter. I would like to see more of us placing greater personal and family focus on Easter, and not relying merely upon a single annual sacrament meeting to serve that purpose. I’ve written more than once on the topic, in (for example) these Deseret News columns:

“The days leading up to Easter Sunday” (2011)
“Holy Week aids Easter reflections” (2014).

The Easter holiday commemorates an event of absolutely vast — perhaps literally infinite — significance. I’ve always loved what the Prophet Joseph Smith had to say on the topic:

“The fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the Apostles and Prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that He died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven; and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it.” (quoted in B. H. Roberts, ed., History of the Church, 3:30)

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