Easter
Is a spring festival that celebrates the central event of
the Christian faith: the resurrection of Christ three days after his death by
crucifixion? {1} Easter is the oldest Christian
holiday and the most important day of the church year.
All the Christian
movable feasts and the entire liturgical year of worship are arranged around
Easter.
Easter Sunday is preceded by the season of Lent, a 40-day period of fasting and
repentance culminating in Holy Week, and followed by a 50-day Easter Season
that stretches from Easter to Pentecost.
The origins of the word
"Easter" are not certain, but probably derive from Estre, an
Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring {2}.
The German word Ostern
has the same derivation, but most other languages follow the Greek term used by
the early Christians: pascha, from the Hebrew pesach (Passover).
There is
evidence that Christians originally celebrated the resurrection of Christ every
Sunday, with observances such as Scripture readings, psalms, the Eucharist, and
a prohibition against kneeling in prayer. {6} At some point in the first two
centuries, however, it became customary to celebrate the resurrection specially
on one day each year. Many of the religious observances of this celebration
were taken from the Jewish Passover. The specific day on which the resurrection
should be celebrated became a major point of contention within the church.
First, should it be on Jewish Passover no matter on what day that falls, or
should it always fall on a Sunday? Nevertheless, the church majority officially decided that Easter should always
be celebrated on a Sunday. Eusebius of Caesarea, our only source on this topic,
reports the affair as follows:
A question of no small importance arose at that time [c. 190
AD]. The dioceses of all Asia, as from an older tradition, held that the
fourteenth day of the moon, on which day the Jews were commanded to sacrifice
the lamb, should always be observed as the feast of the life-giving pasch,
contending that the fast ought to end on that day, whatever day of the week it
might happen to be. However it was not the custom of the churches in the rest
of the world to end it at this point, as they observed the practice, which from
Apostolic tradition has prevailed to the present time, of terminating the fast
on no other day than on that of the Resurrection of our Savior. Synods and
assemblies of bishops were held on this account, and all with one consent
through mutual correspondence drew up an ecclesiastical decree that the mystery
of the Resurrection of the Lord should be celebrated on no other day but the
Sunday and that we should observe the close of the paschal fast on that day
only. {7}
With this issue resolved, the next problem was to determine which
Sunday to celebrate the resurrection.
Rabbits and eggs, for example, are widely-used pagan
symbols for fertility.
Christians view the Easter eggs as symbols of joy and
celebration (as they were forbidden during the fast of Lent) and of new life
and resurrection. A common custom is to hide brightly colored eggs for children
to find
