Today is Good Friday, an official state holiday in Hawaii, so we’re reposting our annual recounting of how it came to be that the State commemorates the date of the crucifixion, and how that squares with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Turns out that it doesn’t really. It’s just coincidence that the “spring holiday” occurs on the same day, and it’s plausible that the State had a secular purpose when it officially sanctified “a religious holiday observed primarily by Christians commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death at Calvary.”