Good (Friday) enough for me

The question is a fair one...

Why is it called Good Friday since the worst thing imaginable happened that day?

My wife says it's like they got the Friday after Thanksgiving and the Friday before Easter mixed up.

The Friday mention is also called in various countries Holy Friday, Black Friday, Great Friday, Long Friday and Silent Friday.

The phrase "Good Friday" does NOT appear in the Bible and neither does the word "Friday." The ONLY day of the week given a name in the Bible is the seventh day, the Sabbath.

The other days are designated as the first, second, third and so on. Good Friday is a fast day created by the Roman Catholic Church in the 4th century A.D. (long after Jesus died). The day is dedicated to commemorating the crucifixion and death of Jesus. The following is the Catholic Church's explanation:

"Good Friday is the English designation of Friday in Holy Week -- that is, the Friday on which the Church keeps the anniversary of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
"From the earliest times the Christians kept every Friday as a feast day; and the obvious reasons for those usages explain why Easter is the Sunday par excellence, and why the Friday which marks the anniversary of Christ's death came to be called the Great or the Holy or the Good Friday. The origin of the term Good is not clear. Some say it is from "God's Friday" (Gottes Freitag); others maintain that it is from the German Gute Freitag, and not specially English." (The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VI, 1909).

So, that's the technical explanation. I would add to those facts that it is Good because the most important gathering of moments happened: 1) Jesus shed the blood of a perfect, innocent lamb; 2) that shed blood led not only to his death; 3)but  those events were directly responsible for our salvation.

Another source clarifies what is meant by a fast on Good Friday and when the death of Jesus is actually celebrated:

"The Catholic Church treats Good Friday as a fast day, which in the Latin Rite of the Church is understood as having only one full meal (but smaller than a regular meal) and two collations (a smaller repast, two of which together do not equal one full meal) and on which the faithful abstain from eating meat. In countries where Good Friday is not a day of rest from work, the afternoon liturgical service is usually put off until a few hours after the recommended time of 3 p.m.
"The Celebration of the Passion of the Lord takes place in the afternoon, ideally at three o'clock, but for pastoral reasons a later hour may be chosen. The vestments used (by Roman Catholic priests) are red (more commonly) or black (more traditionally)." (Wikipedia, article 'Good Friday')

According to Catholic dogma, which has largely been carried over into the Protestant churches, Jesus was killed on Friday and resurrected Sunday morning (in 33 A.D. usually), with the anniversaries of those dates observed as part of the Easter celebration.

A little research will show that the origin of what we call Easter or the Easter holiday has NO Biblical basis whatsoever! Easter was never taught or observed by the early New Testament church.

In order to move people away from celebrating the Biblical Christian Passover, the Catholic Church adopted and "christianized" a pagan holiday that celebrated the false goddess Ishtar (Astarte). Ishtar was considered the goddess of fertility, love, war and sex by the Babylonians and Assyrians. Her holiday was celebrated around the Spring equinox.

 

According to some, Jesus was crucified and died at 3 p.m. on a Wednesday (in 30 A.D.), spent three full days and nights in a tomb (72 hours total), then was resurrected back to life by God just before sunset Saturday. In order to fulfill prophecy, Jesus could not have died on "Good Friday!"
(And by the way, for those daily readers of mine who might have noticed there was no Holy Thursday or Maundy Thursday reading, I had a 24-hour virus and spent Thursday throwing up. That wasn't good either.)