With Good Reason

If a visitor from outer space were to go to any Christian country, he would probably conclude that the most important religious holiday there was Christmas. He might be forgiven for thinking so. Christmas after all receives much more attention, whether in the media, at home and especially in the business world, than virtually any other holiday. However, from a spiritual standpoint Christmas ranks far behind Easter. My father once explained it well for me: anybody can be born, but not everyone can rise from the dead. Therefore as Christians it behoves us to know a little bit more about the history of this pivotal feast day.

The original word for Easter was “Pascha” in Greek (the root of the term “paschal”). “Pascha” in turn stems from the Hebrew “Pesach,” Passover, an important Jewish holiday that occurs in early spring and commemorates the Israelites’ freedom from slavery in Egypt. Unlike Christmas and Hanukah, which also occur at roughly the same time of year but have nothing in common religiously, Passover and Easter have always been intricately connected. Jesus’ Last Supper was essentially a Passover meal. In fact, there was great controversy in the early Church as to whether Easter should be observed on the date of Passover itself or the Sunday immediately following the first full moon on or after March 21. As the Jewish influence in the Church began to wane, the latter date prevailed – partly on the grounds that Jesus was resurrected on a Sunday. The Eastern Orthodox Churches go by the Julian rather than Gregorian calendar, so their Easter often falls on a different Sunday – occasionally a month apart – from that of the Western (Catholic and Protestant) Churches.

As Christianity spread from its original homeland of Palestine, Easter celebrations took on a number of pre-Christian customs, including ones familiar to us like the rabbit and painted eggs. The reason for adopting these traditions was to make Easter and Christianity in general more palatable to pagan converts so that they didn’t have to feel that embracing the new religion meant an end to fun and games. Easter egg decoration has become quite an art in some countries, particularly those in Eastern Europe. Though now artificial dyes are used for this purpose, traditionally the eggs were coloured by wrapping them in onion skins and boiling them. The colour from the onion peel would then seep onto the egg. The most famous Easter “eggs” in history were those made in enamel, gold, silver and other metals by jeweller Peter Carl Faberge for the Russian royal family in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

After the Reformation, the many Protestant denominations took different approaches to Easter. Groups like the Lutherans and Anglicans continued to observe it as the Catholics before them had done. On the other hand, the Puritans in early colonial America shunned overt Easter celebrations. Some historians say this was because they saw the holiday as “Popish,” a derogatory term for Roman Catholic, others that they were suspicious of the pagan origins of some popular Easter traditions (what always comes to my mind is the old adage that a Puritan is someone who gets upset at the notion that somebody somewhere may be having more fun than he or she is). In fact Easter was not celebrated widely in the United States until the mid-1800s, in contrast to the rampant commercialism surrounding the holiday today.

Most Christian countries have developed their own Easter traditions. Many of these customs involve food. For example, the Russians bake a delicious bread called kulich with butter, eggs, milk and sometimes fruits and nuts (hint from a seasoned shopper: if you wait until after Easter to buy kulich, you can often get it half-price). England’s famous hot cross buns are also a traditional Easter serving. Baking bread for Easter seems to have a long history in that nation. Twelfth-century chronicles from the village of Biddenden in Kent County speak of two women, Siamese twins named Eliza and Mary Chalkhurst, who ordered in their will that following their death breads and cakes with an effigy of the girls on the top be distributed to the poor of their town on Easter Sundays. My father, who is Italian, told me of how his parents would buy a lamb in late February or early March. After a few weeks of eating to its heart’s content and putting on several extra pounds, the lamb would - to my father’s and his siblings’ dismay - end up on the Easter Sunday dinner table.

So have a Happy Easter – but remember how it got here!