Easter
Easter – or Pagan – eggs
Easter, which commemorates the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, is the most important festival in the Christian calendar. Yet the eggs, bunnies and fluffy chicks of Easter as we know it are as much to do with paganism as they are Christianity.
There are variations in the rituals between different Christian denominations, but for all religious Christians, Easter is a week long series of services and events to commemorate Holy Week, the last week of Jesus’s life. Beginning with Palm Sunday, when followers of Jesus laid palm leaves at his feet as he made his triumphant entry into Jerusalem, and ending on Easter Sunday, when Christians believe that Jesus was resurrected, congregations around the Christian world have a series of different services for each event.
Ways of remembering
There is Holy Thursday or Maundy Thursday, said to be when Jesus hosted the Last Supper and warned his disciples that one of them would betray him. Many denominations carry out Holy Communion, the taking of bread and wine as a way of remembering the body and blood of Christ, on this day.
Good Friday is when Christ was crucified, and is the most sombre day of the year and a time of prayer and reflection. Many Christians, mainly Catholics, take part in the Easter Vigil service on the following Saturday night, with the Easter mass taking place at midnight. Some congregations watch the sunrise together. In America, these services attract great attention from the media.
New life
Easter Sunday is a day of great joy and celebration as it marks the day that Jesus is believed to have risen from the dead. Belief in the resurrection, a seemingly impossible event, is a fundamental test of faith for Christians.
Christians believe that the resurrection represents a new start and a new life for everyone, and illustrates that Jesus died for the rest of the human race and that therefore God would forgive everyone their sins. It symbolises the triumph of God and of good after the crucifixion.
Every Easter Sunday, the Pope issues the ‘Urbi and Orbi’, an Easter message, traditionally of hope and peace, delivered in many different languages.
Ancient roots
It is believed that Christians set their festivals to coincide with traditional celebrations and festivals as well as with the more established Jewish religious calendar. This is why ancient customs, such as the giving of eggs and stories of the Easter Bunny are connected with Easter.
For pagans, the spring is a time of renewal and rebirth, which fits well with the later Christian belief of resurrection. Pagan tradition suggests that the name Easter is derived from Ostara or Eostre, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring. The Pagans celebrated the Festival of Spring in March, to symbolise the rebirth of nature following winter.
Even today, Pagan symbols live on in the celebration of Easter, with the hare, a symbol of fertility, becoming the Easter Bunny, and brightly decorated eggs, which were originally used to represent the colours of the new spring. In fact, the custom of giving eggs at Easter time has been traced back to Egyptians, Persians, Gauls, Greeks and Romans, to whom the egg was a symbol of life.
Eggs of all sorts
Now the giving, decorating and eating of eggs, real or chocolate, occurs in thousands of religious and folk customs around the world. Eggs are rolled down hills, painted, hidden in bushes for children to find or decked out in the latest Disney character. In the United States, Easter is celebrated with a large Easter Egg Hunt by children on the White House Lawn. The egg is as integral a part of Easter as images of the crucifixion.
Easter is also connected to the Hebrew Pesach (Passover) festival, an important date in the Jewish calendar, commemorating the flight and freedom of the Israelites from Egypt and slavery when the angel of death ‘passed over’ their dwellings protecting them from the 10th plague – the death of the firstborn in each home.
