On East morning, as the first faint rays of the sun lighten the sky at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the Plaintive sounds of trombones call the townspeople to the Moravian Burying Ground where they welcome the rising sun with songs of praise: Christ is risen.
In similar ceremonies throughout the land millions of people gather on hilltops, parks, churches and open spaces to salute another Easter dawn. There is a resurrection of hope and joy as the earth reawakens to another Spring. New life emerges: young lambs, fresh green grass, and delicate blooms appear. Days are growing longer and there is more warmth in the sun. Birds sing and the world rings with gladness.
One of the holiest days of Christendom, Easter commemorates Christ's resurrection from the tomb where he had lain for three days following his crucifixion. When he arose after the three days it was to fulfill his promise to rise again as proof of eternal life.
Although Easter is based on events in the life of Christ, older traditions have influenced the customs of the festival. The name Easter itself derives from the ancient Norse festival of spring sun (Eastre) which celebrated the awakening of new life and the death of winter. The Christian Easter gradually replaced the pagan festival, but some of the rites of spring were retained since Christ's resurrection had occurred during that season.
Jesus had gone to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover and he was crucified on the first day of Passover. Consequently, for many years Easter was celebrated on the same date as the Passover.
But the Passover, reckoned by the lunar calendar, was a movable festival and the Christians believed that Easter should always fall on Sunday, the day Christ rose from the grave. So in the year 325 A.D., during the rule of Emperor Constantine, a council of churchmen, assisted by astronomers, decreed that Easter should fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the first day of spring (March 21). This settled the matter until 1582 when the Julian calendar, which had been in effect at the time the date was determined, was replaced by the Gregorian calendar, resulting in a difference of eleven days. The new calendar was immediately accepted by all Roman Catholic nations, but change until 1752. The Eastern Orthodox Church still follows the Julian calendar, which accounts for the later observance of Easter by members of those churches.
Celebration of Easter by early settlers in the United States mirrored their European backgrounds. In the regions settled by those of Roman Catholic heritage Easter was observed from the beginning. But the straight-laced puritans in New England, still influenced by the British prohibition against what they considered profane celebrations of Christmas and Easter, did not observe either holiday.
Easter is now celebrated throughout the country, although the customs, traceable to the different ethnic heritages, still vary with the regions. The German-Americans of Pennsylvania, for instance, preserve the custom of eating fried crullers on Shrove Tuesday; the Mexicans living in California and the Southwest burn an effigy of Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus; and those of Greek origin take part in a funeral procession following a flowerdecked bier bearing the figure of Christ.
Easter is properly designated as a "season," for it begins forty days before Easter Sunday, in memory of Jesus' forty-day fast before his crucifixion. The name for this period in most Latin languages comes from quadragesina (fortieth). In Spanish, for example, it is called Quaresma. But in English it is called Lent, presumably from the Anglo-Saxon word for springtime lengten-tid (a lengthening time).
In early times devout Christians were required to confess their sins the day before Lent began. The old English term for confess were "shroves." Thus the Tuesday preceding lent became Shrove Tuesday. In preparation for the forty-day fast it became popular to feast and make merry, and Shrove Tuesday, the climax of the carnival period, gained the name Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday). Carnival is celebrated widely in Europe and South America, each festival having its special features’usually characterized by unrestrained reveling. The German word for the celebration, Fasching, which stems from vasen meaning "running around crazily," is aptly descriptive of carnival everywhere.
The most famous carnival in the United States is the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Louisiana, where it has been with increasing vigor and intensity since 1766 when it was introduced by the French settlers. There the celebration begins officially on Twelfth Night (January 6) with a grand ball, and from then until the beginning of Lent nightly parades of elaborately decorated floats carry the Krewe members through the streets and finally to a gala ball. Lively bands precede the floats and flambeaux, characteristic of the animated festivities, light their way. On Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras) no one in New Orleans thinks of anything but carnival revelry. The giant Rex parade, followed by hundreds of other floats, winds playfully through the city making frequent stops for the King to toast past kings and to greet the throngs of costumed spectator. That night the Mystick Krewe of Comus threads its parade over the debris-laden streets and terminates at the ballroom which traditionally adjoins the site of the Rex ball. Amid music, dancing, and pageantry, the royal courts preside in majestic elegance until midnight when the mood suddenly changes. Rex and the King of Comus meet in courtly splendor and carnival is over. Lent has begun and the celebrants turn toward the period of abstinence.Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, takes its name from the Roman Catholic custom of placing a cross of ashes on the foreheads of the parishioners as the beginning of the period of public penance. The ashes are from burned palms saved from the previous Palm Sunday. Special services of meditation and prayer are held on Ash Wednesday and throughout the Lenten period by both Protestant and Catholic churches.
The events leading up to the crucifixion have since been commemorated by Christians in what is called Holy Week. When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the Sunday preceding his crucifixion he was hailed as a King and the people spread palm branches in his path. Palm Sunday, one week before Easter, recalls this and initiates Holy Week. In most Christian churches there is special music--often including "The Palms" by Jean-Baptiste Faure, or Bach's "St. Matthew Passion"’and palm branches or pussy willow boughs are given to the parishioners at some services.
During the Last Supper Jesus gave his disciples final words of comfort, help and guidance, and admonished them to keep his commandments, to love the Father and each other. This is commemorated on Maundy Thursday, observed by processions, prayers and penance.
Good Friday, commemorating the Crucifixion, is the most solemn day of Holy Week. Church services held on that day, characterized by sadness, prayer and mourning, last from noon until three o'clock in the afternoon. The Saturday when Christ rested in the tomb is commemorated in some churches by an Easter vigil and the lighting of paschal candles. Because of this ceremony Easter Eve is sometimes called "Night of Illumination."
Music is an integral part of all Holy Week services. Hymns to Easter are sung by the congregations; choirs chant arias from Bach's St. Matthew and St. John Passions; and organ music fills the churches with reverent expressions of praise. Oratorios based on the Crucifixion and Resurrection are presented in theaters and opera houses as well as in the churches.
George Frederick Handel's Messiah, especially the "Halleluja Chorus," has become synonymous with Easter. This deeply moving oratorio, first performed in 1742 and originally played principally at Christmas, tells of Christ's birth, life on earth, and through the Crucifixion and Resurrection sums up man's faith in what the Christ stands for. Many great artists throughout the world have played and sung the Messiah. One recent rendition by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, with Leonard Bernstein conducting, is available on a Long Play record. (Columbia Masterworks)
Although everything connected with the celebration of Holy Week is religious in nature, the symbols that have come to typify Easter (new clothes, daffodils, Easter lilies, baby chicks, bunny rabbits and Easter eggs) have no sacred connotation and they are only remotely related to the Resurrection.
As a salute to spring, almost everyone wears something new on Easter. After the church services they stroll through parks or along prominent boulevards, enjoying the fresh green of new leaves and "Preening their feathers" in the radiance of spring sunshine. The most famous "Easter Parade" in the United States is the one along Fifth Avenue in New York City, where women wearing elegant (and sometimes outlandish_ hats and men in morning coats and top hats crows the Avenue in a veritable fashion parade. Irving Berlin described it in his popular song:
In your Easter Bonnet
With all the frills upon it
You'll be the grandest lady
In the Easter parade.
Gardens at Eastertime are bright with spring flowers --brilliant red tulips, fragrant white and gold narcissus, butter-yellow daffodils, and every variety of lilies. The stately white Easter lily, angel of flowers and symbol of beauty and goodness, appears on every church altar and is often sent in be-ribboned pots as an Easter gift.
Of all the symbols, though, the egg and the hare (rabbit, bunny), considered from ancient times to represent fertility and new life, are those most frequently associated with Easter. Dyed eggs, not unlike those seen today, were exchanged at ancient spring festivals. Yellow stood for the returning sun and red for the joy of life. In time, the decoration of eggs became a fine art in European countries, and immigrants from those countries brought their skills to the United States. Now Easter eggs appear in an infinite variety of colors and materials--some decorated at home, and many more produced commercially. There are hen eggs hard-cooked and dyed in brilliant hues, or painted in imaginative designs; chocolate eggs filled with soft marshmallow or candied fruits and nuts; and those of crystal sugar coated with edible pink and white rosebuds or made personal by a name traced in candy icing. Young children find baskets of eggs in a colored straw nest on Easter morning, and the older one have fun creating their own collections with home-made dyes and their paint boxes. The little ones seem happy with the explanation that the Easter Bunny brings the baskets, but adults keep wondering how the legend originated.
One version attributes it to an old woman in Germany who was too poor to buy treats for their children. Instead she dyed eggs all colors, placed them in nests of grass and sticks, and told the children to bunt for their surprises in the garden. While they were looking, a rabbit hopped out of a nest, and one of the children cried, "the rabbit left colored eggs for our Easter Day surprise." German immigrants who settled near Fredericksburg, Texas, introduced the legend, and, as folk tales have a way of doing, it has grown with succeeding generations. As it now goes, a mother saw fires burning in the distance which she believed to have been caused by unfriendly Indians. To calm the children's fears she told them that the Easter rabbit and his helpers were cooking eggs in a big pot and burning wild flowers on the hills to make dyes to color them for Easter.
Like the egg, the Easter bunny appears in many forms: silk-furred live rabbits are given for pets; little tots cuddle soft, woolly stuffed bunnies; and rabbits molded of bittersweet chocolate stand on every candy counter. Egg rolling, an Easter tradition of ancient origin brought to the United States by the colonists, is held each Easter Monday on the White House lawn. The custom was started by Dolly Madison, wife of president James Madison, and ever since First Ladies have been hostesses to hundreds of eager children who turn the usually sedate grounds into a festive playground as they merrily roll colored eggs down the greensward to the accompaniment of lively band music. Not only the children in the nation's capital have their Easter amusement. Practically every community of any size in the United States sponsors an Easter egg hunt in a public park where the children fill their baskets with colored eggs that have been hidden in the grass, the bushes, or even in the branches of trees.
Most of the Easter foods are eaten all during springtime, but Hot Cross Buns, small sweetened rolls marked with an icing across, are served only during the Lenten season. Easter dinner features young lamb, spring peas, tiny new potatoes, and eggs in many forms.
All during the spring season
there are reminders of the
Easter message of hope, joy and the resurrection of spirit.
Richard Wagner's operatic story of Parsifal poetically
retells the search for the Holy Grail and of man's hope
for redemption; passion music and the passion play,
depicting Christ's last days on earth, are presented by
inspired performers in appropriate locales; and
charitable organizations such as the Easter Seal Society
concentrate their efforts toward helping the physically,
mentally or spiritually handicapped.