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.
The Easter
Bunny
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.
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.
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
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 new life and renewal certainly has made its own nest in
the human culture.
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.
Source for
information:
http://www.easter-traditions.com/html/other_traditions.html
