The celebration of Easter to Christians is arguably one of the most significant rituals in their annual holiday calendar. In its simplest form, Easter signifies the resurrection of Jesus Christ. As said in the book Proclamation and Celebration, “The overarching purpose of this festival is to celebrate the fact that God raised Jesus from the dead, an act of God out of which all real life flows”(Hedahl 62).
It is hard to understand how a deeply religious holiday, such as Easter, could have evolved into a celebration of life-sized rabbits and egg hunts. I am not of the Christian religion, in fact, I do not identify as a religious individual. However, I have always taken part in celebrating Easter with family and friends. Although I have practiced some of the more commercialized rituals associated with the holiday, I have never fully understood what Easter meant to others. For the sake of this research, I will be focusing on how members of the Christian religion practice Easter and what the origins and rituals of Christian Easter are. In addition, I will be analyzing how sacred time works to highlight the chronology of Easter and why it occurs when it does.
It is of importance to define what myth, ritual, and sacred time means in a religious context. In Gary Kessler’s text, Studying Religion, myth is defined as: “a sacred story” in which is true to the believer but regarded as a falsity to non-believers (Kessler 60). To believers, a sacred story often serves a role of great importance to their religion and its truth is “beyond question”(Kessler 60). This importance is rooted in the fact that a myth “reveals something about the meaning of human life and about the universe in which we live or die”(Kessler 60). The Christian religion holistically is very fond of the practice of myths and myth telling, however, in modern times, has found a struggle in the “psychological crutch.” This details the predicament that as time moves on, ancient myths have less of a resonance with new generations of believers within the Christian religion(Carattini).
The study of ritual is quintessential to the understanding of any religion. In Gary Kessler’s text, Studying Religion, a ritual is defined as: “stylized, symbolic bodily gestures and actions (including verbal actions) usually repeated in specific ways on occasions of significance and in special contexts frequently involving what participants take to be sacred presences” (Kessler 83). Studying the holiday of Easter in respect to Christianity will offer a better understanding of the religion holistically. Lastly, sacred time goes hand in hand with the analysis of ritual and myth as they are established by one another. In Gary Kessler’s text Studying Religion, it is said that every myth “constructs a time filled with unusual and extraordinary events of power” In addition, every ritual creates a “holy time when the mundane concerns of daily routine are set aside in order to enter a certain time of power”(Kessler 103).
Sacred time is significant for studying the myth of Easter and its subsequent chronology on the Christian ritual calendar. Instead of the rituals of Easter staying true to one day, they were turned into a remembrance over the course of an entire season: Spring. The season of remembrance began with a forty day period of Lent: in which started with Ash Wednesday and ended with a week called Holy Week. Of that week, two significant days are “Palm Sunday” when Jesus entered Jerusalem and “Good Friday” when Jesus died. As said by Forbes, “Easter and the rituals surrounding it became the first portion of the Christian Ritual Calendar” (Forbes 97).
The first step to understanding the eventual modern rituals associated with Easter is understanding the ancient myth behind it: beginning with the celebration of Passover. Christianity is evidently a product of Judaism and thus, Easter was derived from the Jewish ritual Passover. A large amount of Christians do not even call the day Easter, they call it Passover or “Pascha.” Passover to the Jewish religion, “remembers the exodus, the deliverance of the Hebrew people from slavery in ancient Egypt more than three thousand years ago” (Forbes 81). More similarly to Christian Easter, Passover celebrates the series of events leading up to the “crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ” (Forbes 80).
What differentiates Christian Easter from Jewish Passover however, is the date in which it is celebrated annually, in addition to what is emphasized most in said celebration. Christians who believe Easter should be celebrated exactly in regards to the practices of Jewish Passover would have liked Easter to be celebrated on the beginning date of Passover. These Christians differed in what they believed should be emphasized most in Easter holiday. Ultimately they believed it was of utmost importance to celebrate the “crucifixion of Jesus Christ who died for the sins of humanity” (Forbes 90). In contrast, there was a group of Christians who in reverse believed that the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus should take place on the Sunday after Passover, which is when it is now celebrated. This would emphasize Jesus’ “triumph over death” (Forbes 90). Eventually, it was mandated by the Nicaea council that Easter is celebrated on Sunday. This description of the origins of Easter highlights the sacred time in which Easter takes place, as well as the current day of Christian worship, Sunday.
Easter is a ritual of Spring seasonal observance, thus it is rooted in the ideas of rebirth and revitalization. One of the key ideas regarding the origins of the word Easter, which is used to refer to the resurrection of Jesus, is derived from two men named Bede and Grimm. Both men possess the idea that Easter comes from the “pre-Christian fertility goddess” whose name was Eostre (Forbes 93). Both Grimm and Bede’s arguments seem to be lacking credibility and evidence in hindsight. Evidently, there is no, “art, carvings, or religious objects” that point to this existence of this goddess”(Forbes 95). However, at the time, the myths they presented seemed plausible. Bede refers to the goddess Eostre in his book The Reckoning of Time in which it is summarized, “the month in which English Christians were celebrating the resurrection of Jesus had been called Eosturmonath in old English, referring to a goddess named Eostre”(Forbes 94). Grimm provides the claim, that through linguistic reconstruction, “Eostre was basically the same as the Germanic goddess Ostara”(Forbes 96). Essentially, Grimm compared alike goddess names to that of Eostre in order to prove her existence. The name Easter, whether or not derived from Grim and Bede’s claims, stuck to the Christian Passover holiday. Perhaps, as said by Forbes, the name Easter could be rooted to “east” which carries the meaning of “dawn, spring, and a new life”(Forbes 96).
Easter has always been a holiday in the Spring season, thus a lot of the rituals associated with the holiday have something to do with Spring: but why bunnies and egg hunts? Evidently, colored eggs and bunnies are symbolic of the spring season, however, are exaggerated by modern culture. Easter is a holiday in which represents fertility and rebirth, which rabbits and eggs also symbolize. Rabbits are symbolic of fertility as they, “breed and mature rapidly.”(Forbes 99) The myth of the Easter hare was recorded in the 1600s when it is said that the hare “brought eggs to children” (Forbes 100). The children were told, similar to the rituals in Christmas, that good behavior was rewarded with a colored egg and vice versa. Interestingly, the Easter hare evolved into the “easter bunny” or “Easter rabbit” in modern ritual. According to Forbes, this shift may have been made as bunnies are more appealing to children than their more aggressive, and sexual counterparts of hares (Forbes 102).
Likewise, to the popular ritualistic symbol of bunnies, eggs also serve the same symbolic meaning in Easter. Eggs are symbolic of new life which perfectly accompanies the meaning of Easter: the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the Christian Church, eggs are blessed with the following prayer, “Bless O Lord, we beseech Thee, this thy creature of eggs, that it may become a wholesome sustenance to Thy faithful servants, eating in thankfulness to Thee, on account of the Resurrection of Our Lord” (Newall 257). Folklorist Venetia Newell says, “ All over the world, wherever eggs are laid, they represent life and fertility and are symbolic of creation and resurrection” (Forbes 105).
The myth of the Easter egg as part of Christian ritual dates back to the Middle Ages. Forbes records that, In “1290 it was recorded that King Edward I of England wished to purchase 450 eggs in the Easter season, to be colored or covered with gold leaf and distributed to members of his royal household” (Forbes 106). The ritual of decorating eggs as part of the practice of Easter spread from Europe and beyond. In Eastern Europe, Easter eggs are said to be red because of the myth of Mary Magdalene, as identified in the Gospel of Luke. Mary presents a white egg to the king, and in return, the egg turns red. This myth reinstalled belief in the resurrection of Christ as it was said if the “egg turned red, then Jesus was resurrected”(Forbes 106).
It is apparent that modern Easter rituals incorporate elements of the ancient myths of Easter celebration. However, due to commercialism and domestication, Easter is a holiday in which is celebrated much differently now than it was in the past: once solely religious holiday. After the Civil War, American’s “reinvented” the ritual of Easter and instead made it a day in which “commemorated youth and family” (Forbes 110). In surveys evidently conducted by the National Retail Federation in 2014, it was revealed that Americans in whole will spend up to “$16 billion” on Easter purchases. Despite the more modern, secular twists on the Easter ritual, Americans still view Easter as a religious occasion. In a Christian based poll regarding what Easter was, “67 percent gave answers such as a Christian holiday, a celebration of God or Jesus, a celebration of Passover, a holy day, or a special time for church and worship attendance” (Forbes 111).
In conclusion, Easter, despite its evolution, still celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Although Easter may be a commercial holiday to many in the modern world, to Christians it is still an impeccably important religious holiday. As a non-religious person, conducting this research has answered a lot of the questions I had regarding the religious phenomenon of Easter. I now have a better understanding of what Easter means to my peers and why it is celebrated. Easter is much more than waiting for gift baskets from the bunny, decorating eggs with family, or going on town led egg hunts. Easter is a celebration of life, of Jesus, and of rebirth.