Celebrating The Resurrection And Renewal

The Christian faith is centered on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. In Paul's letter to the Corinthians, he said, "If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep" (Corinthians 15:19-20). Each year during the Easter holiday, Christians celebrate His resurrection and the promise of a new life.

St. Paul describes the resurrection appearance as such: "For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the scriptures: And that He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve. After that, He was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, He was seen of James; then of all the apostles." Many scholars point to Paul's account as the most verifiable and historically accurate.

There are many reasons why the resurrection matters to Christians. It is an outward sign of God's power and humankind's salvation depends upon this miraculous event, which also proves that the prophecies and teachings of Jesus Christ were true.

This confirms that Jesus will be the judge of all mankind when Judgment Day arrives. Jesus gave his directive to His disciples to go out and spread the word, to create the Church and to teach people how to live and love.

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Different Easter Traditions In Many Cultures

Many secular and spiritual Easter traditions overlap in North American culture, but most believers have no difficulty distinguishing the genuinely important traditions from those that are not.

In the same way, there are some traditions that surround the Christian Easter celebrations in different cultures that may seem odd or uncomfortably different from those practised in North America. Yet here, too, it should be possible to distinguish the important underlying spirituality from a mere unfamiliarity with different customs.

One of the most famous of the Easter traditions, or perhaps more properly considered a pre-Easter tradition, is the Carnival. This occurs in church traditions, mostly Catholic and Orthodox, which have a forty-day Lent period preceding Easter.

During this time, believers engage in fasting and abstinence to prepare for the solemnity and meaning of Easter itself. So the Carnival, taking place just prior to Lent, is the last chance to let off steam before this contemplative period. Two of the most well-known of these Carnivals are in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, and Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

Some variations in Easter traditions stem from the fact that this is an autumn season in the southern hemisphere. So the Australian celebration more closely resembles the American Thanksgiving than the American Easter, accompanied by agricultural harvest shows.

Rather than using the Easter bunny symbol, since rabbits are quite destructive there, Australians use the bilby, which looks like a huge mouse with rabbit-like ears. What is important in learning about all these different traditions is that the underlying sentiment and aspirations for this festival are the same, even if the surface details vary from place to place.

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Easter Story With A Passion Play

If a Christian believer feels a need to deepen their faith, then this can often be accomplished through a re-enactment of the Easter story itself. Church tradition supplies different versions of these re-enactments.

Sometimes they take place within the church itself, sometimes they are private matters, and sometimes they are part of a much larger collective activity. Focusing on the story of Jesus Christ and His death and resurrection will help to incorporate that saving, freeing event more deeply into a believer's daily life.

Sometimes, to drive home the Easter story in a deeper way, people either go to observe a Passion Play or even participate in one. The members of a church may put on a play that re-enacts the events that led up to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

But in some cases, such a play isn't put on by a single church but by an entire town or village. This is the case, for example, with the yearly Passion Play put on in Fazenda, Brazil, or in the town of Oberammergau in Germany.

People might take their Easter devotional attitude and apply it each day, with early morning Bible readings or prayers. They may apply those devotions to meditation on the Stations of the Cross, or their church might have created its own Stations at intervals around the walls of the building, to help the contemplations of the congregation.

As believers keep the works and life of the Easter story of Christ before their eyes day by day, their faith is deepened and these re-enactments, on whatever scale they occur, are a strengthening force in their lives.

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Easter Stories And Origins Of Easter

When you read the Easter stories about the Last Supper, the crucifixion of Jesus, and the triumphant resurrection on the third day, you may not think you're reading anything about an ancient fertility cult.

Yet the early church saw enough parallels between these stories and those of a dying and resurrecting god who revived the vegetation of the world that it deliberately made a connection between them. The origin of Easter, for the most part, lies in those ancient tales, far more than it does in the stories of Jesus.

This sort of death and resurrection, precursors to the Easter stories familiar to the church, was played out graphically in the Greek myth of Persephone. She was required to spend half the year in Hades, the Greek land of death, before returning to the living world for the rest of the year.

Her mother Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, had no heart to make crops flourish while her daughter was in the underworld. The crops only grew again when Persephone returned to life in the upper world. The correspondence between such stories of spring and the meaning of Easter in the church is pretty hard to miss.

Even the Jewish Passover, with which the Easter stories are intimately connected, occurs in the spring. There are so many spring festivals connected to a dying and resurrecting god that it was actually logical for the church to connect their own dying and resurrecting divinity to them.

The meaning of Easter, in the church's view, simply expanded and perhaps explained what those myths imperfectly signified. The church may not have managed to eliminate all the pagan fertility symbolism, but it likely succeeded beyond its wildest dreams as it appropriated those older cults.

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Easter Sunday On The Christian Calendar

The Easter bunny as a pagan fertility symbol? This animal may be portrayed as a frivolous, sometimes goofy character by the media, but it is indeed a remnant of the pagan fertility festivals that were inherited, and to some degree assimilated, by Easter Sunday, supposedly one of the most holy days on the Christian calendar.

There may be a Christian veneer over this celebration now, but the pagan symbols are just under the surface; a fact that can be quite disturbing to some Christians. Many believers actually entertain doubts about having any celebration at all of Easter Sunday or Easter in general.

It's well-known in certain circles that the church overlaid its own commemoration of the resurrection overtop of fertility festivals that already existed in the ancient cultures where it was trying to gain ground.

Some congregations today think that since the only element of Easter that actually relates to Jesus Christ is the Mass, or Holy Communion, the whole Easter celebration should be abandoned.

It's quite true that most traditions connected to Easter Sunday can't be found in the Bible story of Christ's death and resurrection. So should the celebration in general be abandoned?

In support of this idea, some argue that the event has actually caused more rancor than harmony in the church, citing divisive disputes over the proper dates of Easter as one example.

Yet it seems unlikely that the church will ever abandon this festival now. And you might view it as having taken those ancient pagan festivals and "sanctified" them, in the same way it claims to have taken sinful individuals and done the same.

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Decoration And Coloring Of Easter Eggs

It should not be surprising to discover that the decoration and coloring of Easter eggs didn't start with Easter itself, but seems to have existed as a practice long before that celebration came into being.

Eggs are linked to fertility, for obvious reasons, and have been used in and connected to fertility festivals apparently for millennia. As you look through ancient writings and archeological records that predate the origin of Easter, you see the egg appearing at moments that celebrate the fertility of the earth and the return of spring.

There were many similarities and connections between the ancient faith of Zoroastrianism and Judaism and later Christianity, and Easter eggs may be another connection. Zoroastrians began painting eggs for the New Year celebration about 2500 years ago in Persia, and their New Year happened to be the day of the spring equinox.

Judaism, too, uses an egg in its spring festival, the Passover Seder, although this hard-boiled egg is not painted. These are just two examples of eggs being involved in practices that probably became part of the history of Easter.

Over time, Easter eggs have been largely secularized, not always carrying a spiritual connotation. In Imperial Russia, the House of Faberge created stunning jeweled eggs, the miniatures to wear around the neck during Easter celebrations and larger, more intricate ones for lavish display.

Slavic cultures have turned eggs into canvases for brilliant and colorfully painted designs. Eggs began as pagan symbols, were adopted as Christian symbol Easter eggs, and now may have veered away again.

They still have some spiritual significance, but have largely become either works of art in their own right, or simply objects of fun for children.

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Easter Crosses Offer Hope And Faith

The meaning of Easter is inextricably tied to the symbol of the cross, and what was once a Roman instrument of torture and death has been transformed, as it has transcended its origins and become something entirely other.

Over the centuries it has turned into a symbol of hope and faith, as Christianity has lifted it up from its dark beginnings. Easter crosses hearken back to the moment when Christ made the supreme sacrifice, and all the world was said to have changed forever.

In the Indian Orthodox churches, Easter crosses are given a special role during this spring celebration. These churches believe they were founded by the Apostle Thomas when he journeyed to India, and their customs are often somewhat distinct from other branches of the church.

In a way, the crosses they use at Easter mimic the Christian Easter story itself. They begin their own story as Lent begins, when the crosses are set in the center of the church and covered by a veil.

Now the Easter crosses are carried around the church, and are used to touch and bless the people in the congregation. Then these crosses are put to rest until the Feast of Ascension, set on their heads in the sanctuary.

The people of the Indian Orthodox Church have a very intimate and powerful relationship with these crosses used in their Christian Easter ceremonies. They, perhaps more than the members of other churches, have exalted what once were instruments of torture and made them into personal symbols of beauty and redemption.

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