What exactly is Easter? In the stores, we see bunnies and eggs and every cartoon character molded of chocolate or fashioned into a basket. Yet, at church, we wave palms and speak of betrayal and denial, the tragedy of Jesus’ death and the wonder of his resurrection. How did all of these images get lumped together into what we call Easter? And why don’t we celebrate Easter on the same day each year as we do for Christmas?
Like Christmas, Easter is a celebration that Christians partly borrowed from pre-Christian cultural practices. In a very astute move, when deciding on a date for Christmas, early Christian leaders decided to take over the Roman celebration of Saturnalia as well as the traditional celebrations of Winter Solstice. It was about 300 years after the actual birth of Jesus when people began celebrating his birth and no one knew the day on which he was born. The image of the bright star and angel choirs in the night time sky fit well with the long nights of the winter solstice/Saturnalia. It was easy to transpose Jesus as the coming of the light longed for during the long nights of winter for, in the gospels, Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.” The church leaders knew that if they established a separate holiday then people would go on celebrating both solstice/Saturnalia and Christ’s birth, so they transplanted Christ’s birth onto solstice/Saturnalia to make Jesus the focus for the celebration.
Easter was the first Christian festival celebrated. Long before Christmas or Pentecost or Epiphany became staples of the Christian calendar, Easter was the central focus, with a big celebration happening once a year, and every Sunday considered a mini-Easter, a weekly celebration of resurrection. Here are some more facts about Easter:
-The English name Easter is derived from the name of the ancient goddess of the dawn, Eostre, which was also the month on the German calendar in which Jesus’ resurrection was celebrated. In Greek, French, Ukrainian and other languages, the word used for Easter is a version of Paska, which comes from the Jewish word for Passover. Followers of Jesus saw their celebration of Jesus’ resurrection as an extension of the Passover.
-The gospel stories of Jesus’ death and resurrection place it at the time of the Jewish celebration of Passover (a celebration of their escape from slavery in Egypt). So when choosing the date for Easter, the church leaders wanted the date of Easter to be linked to the time of Passover. Passover is celebrated for eight days beginning on the 15 of the Hebrew month of Nissan (in March or April). The Western church leaders in 325 AD, wanted to fix the date of Easter after Passover, so they decided that Easter would always be celebrated on the Sunday following the full moon after March 20 (the date of spring equinox in 325 AD) Since sometimes Spring Equinox is March 21, this means that Easter may or may not be after Passover. Our Easter can fall anywhere from March 22 to April 25. However, the Eastern Christians wanted to keep true to celebrating after Passover. They also followed the Julian calendar rather than the Gregorian calendar which we follow. So their calculations mean that Orthodox Christians typically celebrate Easter later than other Christians. (As a point of interest, the Catholics and Orthodox have recently entered talks about fixing the date of Easter to the 1st or 2nd Sunday in April, which means all Christians would adopt that date.)
-Bunnies, eggs, chicks and all other such symbols of Easter come from pre-Christian days and were an easy fit for the Christian celebration of resurrection in the northern hemisphere. Pre-Christian practices of celebrating the spring time with coloured egss, egg hunts, rabbits, chicks and other signs of new birth were rolled into the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. It was natural to link these symbols of spring’s new life to the Christian celebration of resurrection. Remember, in pre-scientific times, the return of spring was pure magic for people. In the depth of winter, they felt no guarantees that spring would return. It is some of this “magical” feeling that we capture in adopting these symbols. Many of the symbols were given new meaning when adopted into the Christian context. For example, the egg becomes the tomb, breaking open to reveal the bright yellow yolk symbolizing light or Jesus Christ— the light of the world, risen to new life. I haven’t figured out the Christian meaning of chocolate yet but I’m working on it.
-While we link spring and Easter in our celebration of Jesus’ resurrection, in the southern hemisphere, Jesus’ resurrection is celebrated as they are moving into autumn which gives the whole celebration a very different feel. In fact, in southern hemisphere countries, Good Friday often has a greater emphasis than Easter Sunday, linking with the “death” in nature of the autumn season.
-It is easy to overlook Good Friday, and the marking of Jesus’ betrayal, arrest and death, as we joyfully anticipate Easter. What is Good Friday about and why celebrate it? For me, Good Friday is the moment when I understand the profound way that God chooses to connect with human beings. On Good Friday, God stopped being a God somewhere in heaven and fully became God-with-us. In Jesus, God experienced the worst of human experience – betrayal, abandonment, pain and death. When Jesus cried out on the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” it was God entering the loneliness and pain we feel as human beings. At that moment, Jesus is fully human and fully God. While resurrection and new life are wonderful to celebrate, I won’t ever miss marking Good Friday because it is the real gift of God. On Good Friday, we see the lengths that God will go in order to show us the depth of God’s love for us. Then, having experienced that depth of love shown in Jesus’ death, the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection on Easter Sunday is all the sweeter, all the more profound. It is understanding what God did in Jesus’ death, which leads us to the wonder and hope of resurrection. We cannot truly celebrate Easter without Good Friday. That’s why I’ve always brought my children to Good Friday as well as Easter services.
-And what is resurrection? It is new life and new possibility, in this life and in the next. It is a celebration of the core of our faith as stated in the United Church creed says: “In life, in death, in life beyond death; God is with us, we are not alone.”
The United Church’s Song of Faith states it this way:
We place our hope in God.
We sing of a life beyond life and a future good beyond imagining:
a new heaven and a new earth, the end of sorrow, pain, and tears,
Christ’s return and life with God, the making new of all things.
We yearn for the coming of that future, even while participating in eternal life now.
Divine creation does not cease until all things have found
wholeness, union, and integration with the common ground of all being.
As children of the Timeless One,
our time-bound lives will find completion in the all-embracing Creator.
In the meantime, we embrace the present,
embodying hope, loving our enemies, caring for the earth, choosing life.
Grateful for God’s loving action, we cannot keep from singing.
Creating and seeking relationship, in awe and trust,
we witness to Holy Mystery who is Wholly Love.
Holy Week is a celebration of God’s deep and abiding love for us. God made a profound statement through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus that God is willing to be with us through whatever we face in life, our joys and our sorrows, our tragedies and our triumphs. The Good Friday-Easter celebration is our way of proclaiming our faith that nothing can separate us from the love of God. That’s why I love celebrating Good Friday-Easter even more than celebrating Christmas.
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