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).
In Latin, Easter is Festa Paschalia (plural because it is a seven-day
feast), which became the basis for the French Pâques, the Italian Pasqua,
and the Spanish Pascua. Also related are the Scottish Pask, the
Dutch Paschen, the Danish Paaske, and the Swedish Pask. {3} The method for
determining the date of Easter is complex and has been a matter of controversy
(see History of Easter, below). Put as simply as possible, the Western churches
(Catholic and Protestant) celebrate Easter on the first Sunday following the
first full moon after the spring equinox. But it is actually a bit more
complicated than this. The spring equinox is fixed for this purpose as March 21
(in 2004, it actually falls on March 20) and the "full moon" is
actually the paschal moon, which is based on 84-year "paschal cycles"
established in the sixth century, and rarely corresponds to the astronomical
full moon. These complex calculations yield an Easter date of anywhere between
March 22 and April 25. The Eastern churches (Greek, Russian, and other forms of
Orthodoxy) use the same calculation, but based on the Julian calendar (on which
March 21 is April 3) and a 19-year paschal cycle. Thus the Orthodox Easter
sometimes falls on the same day as the western Easter (it does in 2004), but
the two celebrations can occur as much as five weeks apart. In the 20th
century, discussions began as to a possible worldwide agreement on a consistent
date for the celebration of the central event of Christianity. No resolution
has yet been reached. {4} Recent and upcoming
dates {5} for Passover (Judaism),
Easter (Western Christianity), and Pascha (Eastern Christianity) are:
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? It seems Christians in Asia took
the former position, while those everywhere else insisted on the latter. The
eminent church fathers Irenaeus and Polycarp were among the Asiatic Christians,
and they claimed the authority of St. John the Apostle for their position.
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. The Christians in Syria and Mesopotamia held their
festival on the Sunday after the Jewish Passover (which itself varied a great
deal), but those in Alexandria and other regions held it on the first Sunday
after the spring equinox, without regard to the Passover. This second issue was
decided at the Council of Nicea in 325, which decreed that Easter should be
celebrated by all on the same Sunday, which Sunday shall be the first following
the paschal moon (and the paschal moon must not precede the spring equinox),
and that a particular church should determine the date of Easter and
communicate it throughout the empire (probably Alexandria, with their skill in
astronomical calculations). The policy was adopted throughout the empire, but
Rome adopted an 84-year lunar cycle for determining the date, whereas Alexandria
used a 19-year cycle. {8} Use of these different
"paschal cycles" persists to this day and contributes to the
disparity between the eastern and western dates of Easter.
Over
the centuries, these religious observances have been supplemented by popular
customs, many of were incorporated from springtime fertility celebrations of
European and Middle Eastern pagan religion. 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.
