The World is a Stage
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As Easter approaches, I have noticed little in the way the Easter around town. Don’t get me wrong. I have seen lots of bunnies that poop chocolate eggs, stuffed, fluffy animals; little chickens, tons of candy and eggs on trees.
But that is not Easter any more than Santa Claus and presents are Christmas.
What destroyed our religious holidays? I want to blame business and commercialism, but can’t, because they can offer all the gimmicks they like to get us to spend money on presents or candy or flowers, but we have a mind of our own. We don’t have to fall or jump to their playpen and play their way.
It seems the changes began hundreds of years go when the Christian church thinly disguised pagan holidays as Christian ones to attract those same pagans to Christianity. It evidently worked as that is how we got Dec. 25 for Christmas.
It bothers me that the date of Easter bounces around. We know Jesus was crucified in association with the Jewish Passover, yet some years we celebrate Easter before Passover. It seems pretty simple to me that we should honour the crucifixion on Friday or Thursday (whichever theory you like best), in conjunction with Passover, as that event figures so prominently in His life and death. Yet during the first thousand years Easter evidently was being held at various times around the Roman Empire, so in 325 CE when Emperor Constantine called in Christian Bishops and held the Council of Nicaea, figuring out the date became an order of business.
They decided, “Easter would be held on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after the vernal (spring) equinox. From then on, Easter’s date would depend on the ecclesiastical approximation of March 21 for the vernal equinox.”
But why? “They settled on a moveable day that would never coincide again with the Jewish holiday.” That didn’t sound friendly, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t presuming, so I did more research. Evidently some Christians thought the calculations being done by the Hebrews to determine the month of Nicaea in the Jewish calendar were in error. For a long time the argument went on to either stick to the Jewish Calendar and rely on them to tell when Passover would be or they would do their own calculation to determine which month should be Nisan and then they would determine Easter.
Here is the message that was sent to the Church in Alexandria: “We also send you the good news of the settlement concerning the holy pasch, namely that in answer to your prayers this question also has been resolved. All the brethren in the East who have hitherto followed the Jewish practice will henceforth observe the custom of the Romans and of yourselves and of all of us who from ancient times have kept Easter together with you.” Well, that is the best answer I am going to get. Personally I’d like to keep it attached with Passover, as that means something to me.
So where does the name Easter come from? (I never stop asking questions.) We get to jump to the eighth century for that answer, from Anglo-Saxon scholar 'the Venerable Bede' who noted the word Easter comes form Eastre or Eostre, the Saxon goddess of fertility and spring. It was also tied to the spring equinox which signals the time of new birth.
Is that where the eggs come from? I remember before every Easter, Mom boiling up eggs and she, Rob and I decorating them. The little yellow box with the dye and transfers was like magic. Mom did great works of art on her eggs. At Grandmas, the year all my cousins came, we rolled the eggs across the floor smashing them together then eating them! It was fun.
Actually eggs at Easter came from German immigrants who brought over their stories of an egg-laying hare called ‘Osterhase’ to the U.S. in the 1700s. Their children made nests in which the mythical creature would lay his coloured eggs. I guess like at Christmas parents had to sneak the eggs in the basket before morning. Oh, yes, the kids used to leave out carrots for the bunny.
I used to love Christmas and Easter and presents and chocolate, but now, not so much. When I was young the reason of the celebration came first, so we went to church and then enjoyed the weird traditions that have morphed over the last 2,000 years. It seems today that the traditions have overpowered the reason for many Christian religious holy days, which is where the word holidays come from.
One thing though which has never changed is the gift we were all given: Jesus was born, crucified and was resurrected.