Easter and Lent
Easter is the celebration of the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ and is the most important feast of the church. It is preceded by Lent, forty days of penance and fasting in preparation for Easter. These forty days represent the forty-day period that Jesus spent in the desert fasting and praying in preparation for his ministry. During this time he was tempted several times by the devil. The season of Easter lasts from Easter day for a further fifty days until Pentecost.
The period of Lent was introduced in the 4th century to encourage self- discipline. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, when we are marked on the forehead with a cross of ashes as a sign of penitence, and finishes on Easter Sunday. The day before Ash Wednesday is Shrove Tuesday, otherwise known as Pancake Day. Traditionally Christians gave up meat, eggs and dairy produce for Lent and this was the last chance to use up these foods before Lent began. In many countries around the world festivals, carnivals or Mardi Gras (literally fat Tuesday) are held on Shrove Tuesday. The word Shrove derives from the verb ‘to shrive’ which means to confess ones sins.
Traditionally, many of us will give up something we really enjoy for Lent but as a penance perhaps we should be more positive, maybe taking on something spiritual or charitable we wouldn’t otherwise do.
The secular side
Lent culminates in the three days before Easter - Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday which are sometimes referred to as the Easter Triduum, Latin for three days. As with almost all Christian festivals, Easter has become secularised and commercialised but you may be surprised to discover that much of this is not of recent invention. Since its inception Easter has had its non-religious side, the first extant record of Easter is 2nd century when the feast is noted as being well established.
In the parts of Europe they dominated, the ancient Saxons celebrated the return of spring at the vernal equinox, with a festival venerating their goddess of offspring and springtime “Eastre”. Christian missionaries who came across the Anglo-Saxon tribes in the 2nd century, wishing to convert them did so in a clandestine manner. They realised it would be suicidal and not promote their cause if the celebration of the Resurrection did not include some elements of existing pagan festivities.
Converting heathens and refocusing traditions
Bede’s ‘Ecclesiastic History of the English People’ contains a letter from Pope Gregory 1 to St. Mellitis who was on his way to England to do missionary work. The Pope suggests that converting heathens is easier if they are allowed to retain forms of their traditional pagan practices, while refocusing these traditions spiritually towards Christianity. Thus the Pope sanctioned the conversion tactics pointing out that God had done much the same thing with the ancient Israelites.
It is interesting to note that in parts of the world, where the Saxons ruled, the word Easter is related to the ancient word for April—eostremonat - the month dedicated to the goddess ‘Eastre’ whereas in other countries the word generally relates to the Jewish festival of Passover in Hebrew Pesach (e.g.in French Pasque, in Welsh Pasg). Passover is the Jewish springtime festival commemorating the liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage and is held from the 14th to the 21st day of the seventh month of the Jewish calendar. Easter depends on Passover for its position in the calendar. According to the Synoptic Gospels the Last Supper shared by Jesus with his disciples before his crucifixion, i.e. Maundy Thursday, was a Passover Seder, a ritual service and ceremonial dinner for Passover. John has it slightly different, suggesting that Christ’s death, i.e. Good Friday, was at Passover. Whatever, Passover was taken over into the Christian celebration.
Setting the date for the ‘moveable feast’
Setting the date for Easter has a long and confusing history involving the first Council of Nicea, several methods of calculation and changes in calendar. Basically Easter is observed on the Sunday after the first ecclesiastical full moon on or after the day of the vernal equinox. The ecclesiastical vernal equinox is always on March 21 so Easter must be celebrated on a Sunday between the dates of March 22 and April 25. Since Western churches now use the Gregorian calendar to calculate the date and Eastern Orthodox churches use the original Julian calendar, the dates do not usually coincide. Clergymen of various Christian denominations have made many efforts to regularise or fix the date of Easter; proposals include always observing the feast on the second Sunday in April or always having seven Sundays between Epiphany and Ash Wednesday. None of the proposals have attracted sufficient support and it seems unlikely that any of them will be adopted in the near future.
Bunnies and chicks
Finally, Easter eggs, Easter bunnies and chicks - what is their significance? None are modern inventions— all pre-date the Christian celebration of Easter. The rabbit, representing fertility, was the Saxon earthly symbol of Eastre and played a major part in their vernal equinox festivities. Similarly, eggs and chicks have been symbols of rebirth from earliest times and in most cultures. They were present in the Saxon festivities for Eastre. As that festival was celebrated here in England eggs were often wrapped in gold leaf or, if you were a peasant, coloured brightly by boiling them with leaves or petals. So here is the background to our modern celebrations.
Judy Freegard