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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Decorated Eggs Given To Children By Easter Bunnies

Easter bunnies with decorated eggs and gifts, are an event many children across the world, look forward to, every year. It is an event, taking place around the Spring, when eggs are hidden away for the egg hunt, all over the house and in the backyard. Sometimes, the Easter egg hunt may go across the neighborhood and children are searching for Easter eggs all over the neighbourhood.

This is how I enjoyed Easter as a child and this is how my children enjoy Easter. We go to midnight mass on Saturday night and celebrate Resurrection Sunday with a feast after Sunday mass. After everyone celebrates with a feast, children are off to have the time of their lives with the egg hunt and winning prizes from the Easter bunnies.

Easter is a time of celebration, a time of renewal and a time for being together with my extended family.

I use the ideas I learned from my parents on my own children, although I hire Easter bunnies for Easter, as I do not have the gall to dress up as an Easter bunny, and use the same party organizers every year. They have a complete package where they supply all the Easter candy and other Easter gifts the children will earn as they go on an Easter egg hunt.

My children always enjoy finding decorated eggs and winning gifts from the Easter Bunnies.

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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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Finding Easter Activities For Kids Online

Easter is, in the end, a festival of life, whether you regard it spiritually or with a more secular eye. This means that Easter activities for kids are available with either emphasis, and will always involve bright colors and a celebratory atmosphere.

Very often, Easter coincides with a break from school, and this is a great chance to get the kids energized creatively while they are relieved from the drudgery of school work. You may wonder, though, where exactly you're going to find enough Easter ideas to keep them interested.

All you need to do is a web search on Easter activities for kids, and countless possibilities will rise before your eyes. For example, a website called www.thekidzpage.com provides Easter coloring pages, but also has links to online games, clipart and even puzzles.

Those puzzles are especially interesting, because the brightly colored pieces can be moved around the screen with a mouse, and when the picture is completed, the site tells the child what a great job he or she did.

Because Easter is celebrated all over the world, teachers at school can also tailor Easter activities more as cultural learning opportunities than promoting any specific faith. They can study the origins of certain Easter customs, or use Easter pictures to teach how different symbols and objects are used in different cultures.

They might explain the origins of the Washington Easter Egg Roll. There are a multitude of possibilities for making this season both fun and meaningful, and giving the kids a great educational experience too.

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Easter Cultural Dishes For The Holidays

What will you put on your table for the holidays? This question plagues many a homemaker. While there are cultural dishes we all love and grew up with, sometimes we may want to expand our horizons are partake in the fare of other cultures or add a new tradition to distinguish an Easter dinner from a Christmas dinner.

Whether you are celebrating the Jewish Passover, the resurrection of Jesus or the coming of spring, exotic holiday recipes can be discovered all around the world.

Easter in Italy is unforgettable. The holidays are celebrated with solemn processions and masses prior to the Easter holiday, joyous feasting on Easter Sunday and rowdy partying on Easter Monday (La Pasquetta). On this day, families enjoy another day off work to picnic outdoors in the nice weather with their families, enter the Racing of the Egg contest or attend a Festa della Ndrezzata dance.

In Italy, the Easter dinner varies by region, but almost everywhere they share lamb and fancy Easter breads as the main dishes. Hardboiled eggs are important breakfast and dinner menu items in most regions as well. Garlic roasted potatoes, tossed salad with roasted red peppers, olives, sliced tomatoes and artichoke hearts and wine are all quintessential sides.

There are tons of bread varieties for this festive day. Braided egg bread, calabria (with hardboiled eggs hidden inside), colomba pasquale (with crystallized sugar and almonds), gubana (with nuts, fruit, spice and liqueur) and Crescia al formaggio (with cheese). Fruits like grapes, oranges, figs and pears, pies (tortas) and chocolate are delicious Italian desserts.

There is a spirit of optimism that comes along with the holidays during the advent of spring. Dating back to pre-Christian times, people felt hopeful and inspired as the days grew longer, the weather warmed, the flowers pushed their way above ground and new life emerged from the wombs of animals. The best way to celebrate is with festivities, song, dance, prayer and feasts, no matter which culture or religion you are part of.

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Easter Bunny Brings Cheer To Children

Since the Scotch-Irish and English Quakers did not celebrate Easter, it was the German settlers who brought many of our earliest traditions. They celebrated the arrival of Oschter Haws (Easter bunny), they colored eggs, they had Easter baskets, they made Easter candy and chocolates, and the Christian-Germans observed the Easter holiday with a mass and feasting.

It is a bit of a mystery how the bunny rabbit became such a stalwart symbol of Easter traditions, but like Santa Claus, young children loved the magic associated with the fable and enjoyed the gift giving tradition.

Historian Francis Weiser wrote about the bunny's origin, saying: "The Easter bunny had its origin in pre-Christian fertility lore and never had religious symbolism bestowed on its festive usage. However, the bunny has acquired a cherished role in the celebration of Easter as the legendary producer of Easter eggs for children in many countries."

Today, children hunt for colored eggs and place them in Easter baskets along with the modern version of real Easter eggs, which are made of plastic or chocolate candy. In some places, there is actually a war against the Easter bunny. For instance, in 2006, the affable bunny was banned from the St. Paul, Minnesota City Hall for fear of offending Christians.

Christian parents are often torn between keeping the holiday all about Christ and appeasing their children who can't understand why Peter Cottontail and Santa Claus skip their house every year. Some families try to blend the two traditions together, while others try to plan more Jesus-centered activities and give religious-themed gifts instead.

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Decorating Easter Egg Around The World

In the 11th Century, Edward I of England paid eighteen pence to gold-leaf and color 450 Easter eggs to hand out as gifts. Written documentation of the Easter egg dates back an astounding five hundred years! Although it is believed that North African tribes were coloring eggs in springtime much earlier.

Eggs can be dyed using food coloring or natural herbs, dipped in wax, carved, hand-painted or jeweled. It is no surprise that such wondrous and versatile symbolism is used to celebrate Easter.

While the Easter egg is undoubtedly beautiful, many children's favorite egg is made of chocolate. Kinder Surprise Eggs, manufactured by Ferrero Chocolate in Italy, began in 1972 and are sold in every country except for the US. FDA regulation prohibits that non-edible items be included in food.

In a hollow chocolate Kinder Egg, a plastic capsule contains parts of a toy or puzzle that must be assembled by the recipient. This Easter candy has become so popular that a Kinder toy collecting industry popped up over the years. However, politicians in Germany are beginning to follow suit with American officials, stating that the toys may be a "health hazard," which 97% of those surveyed said was just rubbish.

The Easter egg is not seen as a tradition in every country. For example, Mexico, South America and Native American cultures do not use eggs in their holidays celebrations. Often it is viewed as wasteful to make so many eggs that one family can't possibly eat, so in Spain, "hornazo" made of hard-boiled eggs is eaten.

Yet, for most cultures, fresh Easter eggs are seen as prized eats after an arduous winter, and fasting during the Holy Season of Lent.

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Traditional Easter Celebrations

Each spring students enjoy two weeks off school, a time in which they can relax with their families, enjoy the nicer weather and reflect. Traditions vary from religion to religion and person to person, but it is a time for family, food and great joy. In Christian and Eastern religions, Easter is the most important holiday of the year.

A chocolate bunny makes the perfect gift at Easter. The Easter bunny is said to have migrated to American tradition from the German settlers who had a bunny named "Oschter Haws" that left colored eggs for the children.

The multi-colored eggs symbolized the beautiful colors associated with springtime and the bunny itself symbolized fertility, as Teutonic, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring and fertility, was often accompanied by a hare.

Easter traditions are passed down from generation to generation and carry many cultural overtones. While Christians argue that real reason for the season is to commemorate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the Savior, praying and fasting are just a few of the ways people celebrate in modern times.

Feasting, egg hunts, Easter baskets and other celebrations have made this a time to celebrate new life and springtime as well. With two weeks off from school, kids can learn to celebrate both traditions.

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About Easter Baskets And Other Traditions

Children learn about Easter in numerous ways. They make Easter bonnets out of colored paper and color Easter eggs. They may attend a mass if they are Christian or a Passover Seder if Jewish. They anxiously await the arrival of the Easter bunny to bring baskets full of chocolates and eggs.

Perhaps the reading of a book called "Peter Cottontail" or the singing a song called "Hot Cross Buns" will transpire. Families may plant flowers or spend more time outdoors as the days grow longer and warmer. At this time of year there is a plethora of ancient cultural traditions that have survived to modern times, spanning across several different continents and thousands of generations.

To learn about Easter symbols of our present day, we must look past religious symbolism, since many of our modern traditions stem from ancient cultures pre-dating Christianity. Early Anglo-Saxons celebrated the vernal equinox, one of two days out of the year when the sun fixes itself directly over the equator, causing an equally long day and night.

For many this was a new beginning, the start of spring and a time for a fresh start after an often toilsome winter. At this time, the Anglo-Saxons commemorated their goddess of fertility, who always appeared with her furry, wide-eyed companion, the hare.

While she goes by many names from Aphrodite (Cyprus), Astarte (Greece) and Ashtoreth (Israel) to Hathor (Egypt), Kali (India) and Ostara (Norway), she was known to the Anglo-Saxons as "Eastre." It is no surprise, then, where the word "Easter" came from or why the Easter bunny became one of the most identifiable symbols of Easter.

Many of our beliefs about Easter and our current traditions came over to the New World from the old one our ancestors left. The Germans, English, Russians, Ukrainians, Poles and Nordic peoples came over to America, bringing many of their cultural associations with them.

The Germans had long written about "Oschterhase," the Easter hare who brought laid colored eggs in shallow nests for children. The British had many contests like egg jarping, egg rolls and egg hunts. The Nordic commemorated the spring fertility goddess Ostara (also known as "Eastre") and her companion the hare.

The Slavic people brought over their tradition of decorating lavish Easter eggs in brilliant colors. Aside from religion, our Easter celebration is largely a cultural one too.

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The Easter Gifts For Your Family

Easter bonnets and decorated eggs used to be the fashionable Easter offering, but the Easter gift of today can range from eggs and chocolate bunnies to cards and kites.

At www.gifts.com, consumers can find springtime outdoor decorations, personalized picture frames, chocolate Easter baskets, bunny postage stamps, egg-shaped guest soaps, gardening tools and even dog raincoats! While Easter Sunday is typically observed as a religious holiday with mass and dinner, there are many thoughtful Easter gifts to share as well.

Easter eggs are a popular gift, which can be quite beautiful, particularly in the Slavic regions. In Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Ukraine, eggs are hand-painted into elaborate designs. In Belarus, the Easter egg is red with golden markings to symbolize the blood of Christ.

The Fabergé eggs were decorated with paint and jewels for member of the Russian court and are lavish collector's items today. In addition to actual hardboiled and dyed eggs, Easter eggs can also be made of Jellybeans, chocolate, marshmallows or plastic, which can be hidden or used to enclose a treat.

Many kids enjoy making Easter crafts for their family members. Easter egg dyeing is one of the most popular family activities, which can be done quite simply by purchasing the dye tablets from a local supermarket and mixing them with vinegar in special egg-dyeing cups.

Kids can make bunny ears, a bunny basket, Easter bonnets, Easter centerpieces and more at www.familyfun.go.com. Coloring sheets will often do for the little ones. Some families also like to make their own Easter sweets using special molds to make a chocolate egg or chocolate bunny.

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