"Easter tells us that life is to be interpreted not simply in terms of things but in terms of ideals."
~Charles M. Crowe~
 

Easter Poem
 

Bless this day the joy of life,
The revelation of the flesh,
The paradise of man and wife
Joined to share the gift of bliss.

Bless this day the pain of life,
The passion that redeems the flesh,
The love between a man and wife
Beyond all agony and bliss.

Bless this day the end of life,
The peace within the dying flesh,
The bond between a man and wife
That long outlasts their bit of bliss.

Bless this day the whole of life,
The grace of being more than flesh,
The voyage of a man and wife
Across the mystery of bliss.

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Easter Traditions

Long before Easter became the holiday it is today, the spring festival was celebrated by the people around the world. Although associated with the sun and the Vernal Equinox, the celebration was originally based on the lunar calendar. The name Easter is derived from the Saxon Eostre (which is synonymous with the name of the Phoenician Goddess of the Moon, Astarte), a Germanic goddess of spring and the deity who measured time.
 
Curiously, a Jewish festival, Purim, also celebrated in the spring, has as it central character and heroine, Esther who, as queen, kept the evil Haman from killing her people. Even the very word moon derives from the Sanskrit mas or ma, meaning "to measure."
 
Many scholars have suggested that the reason that the moon was chosen by the ancients as the way to measure time was the link between the female cycle and the cycle of the moon. A lunar month of 28 days gave 13 periods in 364 days, which was the solar equivalent of 52 weeks. The ancient Hebrews had long followed a lunar calendar, as had most other ancient cultures. Thus humans could match their natural lives with the nature of the night sky above them.
 
As Christianity grew and spread throughout the world, it was common practice to adopt, modify, convert or take over existing non-Christian festivals, sacred locations and even names, and assimilate them into the Christian theology. The Romans used this method of cultural absorption for centuries as a way of expanding and firming up the Empire. Given the fact that Christianity had its roots in Roman ways, it is not surprising that the same technique was used to spread belief in Christ.
 
The best example of this was in ancient Britain where the bearers of the Cross built their churches and monasteries on the very sites where far more ancient rites had been held.
 
Because Eostre, also know as Ostara, was the goddess of spring and her symbolism dealt with renewal and rebirth, the Christian belief in the resurrection of Christ fit well with these themes.
 
The connection between Christ’s Resurrection and Jewish Passover, which, in addition to the dramatic story of the flight from Egypt, also contains elements of a spring celebration, made the merging of the two religious traditions easily accomplished. .

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Easter Bunny

 

The Easter Bunny: Beloved Easter Symbol   Of all the symbols of Easter, none is more beloved than the Easter Bunny. And, of all the symbols of this season, none has a more varied, unique and universal background than this floppy-eared chocolate confection deliveryman. With his place—and yes, for some reason, the Easter Bunny is always referred to as “he”—in the traditions of many cultures, Rabbit can most certainly answer the question, “What’s up, doc?” (after all, what would Elmer be without Bugs?).   The Advent of The Easter Bunny   The first documented use of the bunny as a symbol of Easter appears in Germany in the 1500s; although the actual matching of the holiday and the hare was probably a much earlier folk tradition. Not surprisingly, it was also the Germans who made the first edible Easter Bunnies in the 1800s.   The Pennsylvania Dutch brought the beneficent Easter Bunny to the United States in the 1700s. Children eagerly awaited the arrival of Oschter Haws and his gifts with a joy second only to that brought about by the winter visit of Kris Kringle.   Rabbits Revered Around the World   Many Asian and Eurasian cultures revere the rabbit (or hare) as a sacred messenger of the Divine; to the Chinese, he is a creature in the moon, pounding rice (the staff of life) in a mortar.   To the followers of Buddhism the rabbit was placed in the moon as a result of his self-sacrifice in offering himself as food. In a second version, the rabbit cooks himself in Indra’s fire since he had no food to offer her and the deity placed him in the moon as a reward. To the Egyptians, the hare (as opposed to the rabbit) was known as un, which meant “to open,” or “the opener.” This was because the hare, unlike his cotton-tailed cousin, is born with his eyes open. “Un” also meant “period” as it was a symbol for both lunar and human cycles.   These traditions undoubtedly spread to the indigenous tribes of Western Europe much as the Indo-European language base developed through encounters between these two groups. This also blended well with Celtic tradition, which viewed the hare as a symbol of fertility and new life, and the Germanic tradition that the hare brought new life each spring.   Even in North America, the Rabbit/Hare is revered. To the Native American peoples, he was the Trickster/Transformer who either plays the Fool or, in other instances, has brought about a benefit for humankind (i.e., the legend of Rabbit bringing fire to the people). The ancient Mayan culture gives Rabbit credit for inventing Mayan writing.   Just as the ancient sacred places and names were blended into the holiday celebration we know as Easter, so too was the Rabbit/Hare molded from an ancient bringer of new life and renewal to the Easter Bunny, a symbol of a holiday celebrating a resurrection. In truth, the Rabbit stays the same: a messenger of a season when all things are possible and all things can again be new.

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Easter Eggs

The association of eggs with the Easter Bunny is actually a recent one. It seems to be the result of an ad campaign (believe it or not) by European candy makers who wanted to advertise their product. The egg, long a symbol of fertility, had long been a traditional staple of Easter celebrations. The pairing of the Easter Egg and the Easter Bunny at the end of the nineteenth century was not only a stroke of marketing genius, but also well-founded in the traditions of the past.
 
Decorating Easter Eggs
 
While no one can say when the practice of giving eggs actually became associated with Easter, the decorating of eggs is as diverse as the cultures that engage in the practice. It is known that the eggs were painted with bright colors to celebrate spring and were used in Easter egg-rolling contests and given as gifts, a practice that predated the advent of Christianity. Medieval records note that eggs were often given as Easter gifts to servants by their masters. What is known is that the egg, like the rabbit, was a symbol of renewal of life and therefore a logical symbol for the celebration of Easter.
 
The methods of decoration are as varied as the peoples who practice it. Some of the most elaborate are the Ukrainian Pysanki eggs. These ornate objects are truly works of art. First, melted beeswax is applied to the white, unblemished shell using a brass cone mounted on a stick; this tool is known as a Kistka. Then, the egg is dipped into the first of a series of dyes; this process is repeated numerous times. The wax is then melted off the egg to reveal the ovoid masterpiece.
 
Easter Eggs Around the World
 
The Greeks dye their Easter Eggs red to symbolize and honor the blood of Christ, while in those in Germany and Austria, traditionally give green eggs on Maundy (or Holy) Thursday—the day commemorating Christ’s Last Supper. In Slavic countries, decorating eggs in special patterns of gold and silver adds luster to the shell and to the sharing. The Armenian tradition is to decorate hollowed out eggshells with religious images significant to the holiday.
 
The Easter Egg hunt itself has also taken many cultural twists and turns. In America, of course, the colored Easter Eggs are hidden and then children search for them. In the northern counties of England, children act out the “Pace Egg Play” and beg for eggs and other presents; the term Pace itself is a derivative of the ancient Hebrew verb posach (to pass over), which has evolved into the better known word and holiday title Pesach, or Passover.
 
Pennsylvania Dutch children believed that if they were good, the Oschter Haws would lay a nest of brightly colored eggs. And, in a far-removed invocation of the egg’s primal symbol—fertility—Polish girls used to send eggs to their beloveds as a token of their feelings. Even more interesting is the fact that a roasted egg can take the place of a lamb shank (which mirrored the traditional sacrificial lamb) on the Seder plate at a Jewish Passover celebration.
 
The egg, like the Rabbit, has become fused into the spring festival of Easter throughout the world. Whether colored, hollowed or made of candy, the source of a child’s delight or a symbol of faith, this image of newlife and renewal certainly has made its own nest in the human cultural psyche
 

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Other Easter Traditions

Easter Sunday

Although taken as a given, one question that is rarely asked, but should be, is why Easter has to fall on a Sunday. In 325 AD, the council of Nice issued an edict that read, in pertinent part, “Easter was to fall upon the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the Vernal Equinox; and if said full moon fell on a Sunday, the Easter should be the Sunday after.”

The Easter celebration was coordinated with older, pre-Christian celebrations of spring. The direct relationship to Sunday as the day sacred to the Sun, the ultimate symbol of life, is obvious; yet the subtle connections to the earlier celebrations of the time of planting and the Moon are of equal importance in determining the day of the Easter celebration.

Easter Baskets

The Easter basket originates from the ancient Catholic custom of taking the food for Easter dinner to mass to be blessed. This, too, mirrored the even more ancient ritual of bringing the first crops and seedlings to the temple to insure a good growing season.

This practice, combined with the “rabbit’s nest” awaited by the Pennsylvania Dutch has evolved in the brightly colored containers filled with sweets, toys and the like left for children on Easter morning by that omnipotent hare.

Bells

The timing of the use of bells at Easter comes from France and Italy. While the gentle pealing of these huge instruments can be heard throughout the year, their songs fall silent on Maundy Thursday—the Thursday before Easter—not to be heard again until Easter Sunday, thus marking the resurrection.

This Easter tradition, too, has an older origin. In many ancient belief systems the period before an equinox or solstice was a time of reflection on the past seasons. This period of silence would then be marked by a joyous celebration of light and sound that told all that the darkness had fled and that new life was coming back into the world.

Other Easter Traditions

The cross and the lily are both Christian symbols relating to the religious significance of the season and the renewal of faith. Similarly, the lamb has a religious basis, both in Christianity (Christ as the Good Shepherd) and in Judaism (the Paschal Lamb). The view of a lamb as a symbol of new life is the foundation for both religious images.

The Easter bonnet and the wearing of new clothes on Easter Sunday are fairly recent additions to Easter traditions. While imitating the more ancient view that the new clothes and colors symbolized the end of winter, new life and renewal, the actual practice of strolling to Church in your “Sunday Best” was not prevalent until the end of the nineteenth century.

A unique Easter tradition founded primarily in England and Russia is the picking of pussy willows. As an ancient symbol that spring had finally arrived, it was viewed as good luckto be tapped on the shoulder by a branch of these soft blooms by a neighbor or loved one.

Though identified in modern times as a Christian Holy Day, Easter, the ancient celebration of spring, has roots far deeper than any one belief or culture. It reminds us that there is always a chance to plant our dreams anew; that the cold of winter will pass; and, that in the course of humankind, you can always plant again.