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- This article is about the Christian festival.
Easter, also known as
Pascha , the
Feast of the Resurrection, the
Sunday of the Resurrection, or
Resurrection Day, is the most important religious
feast of the
Christian liturgical year, observed between late March and late April . It celebrates the
resurrection of Jesus, which his followers believe occurred after his death by
crucifixion in AD 27-33 . In the
Catholic Church Easter is actually an eight-day feast called the Octave of Easter.
Easter also refers to the season of the church year, lasting for fifty days, from Easter Sunday through
Pentecost.
Nature and development
In most languages of Christian societies, other than
English,
German and some
Slavic languages, the holiday's name is derived from
Pesach, the
Hebrew name of
Passover, a Jewish holiday to which the Christian Easter is intimately linked. Easter depends on Passover not only for much of its symbolic meaning but also for its position in the calendar; the
Last Supper shared by Jesus and his
disciples before his crucifixion is generally thought of as a Passover seder, based on the chronology in the Synoptic Gospels. The Gospel of John has a different chronology which has Christ's death at the time of the slaughter of the Passover lambs, which may have been for theological reasons but which is regarded by some scholars as more historically likely given the surrounding events. This would put the Last Supper slightly before Passover, on 14 Nisan of the Bible's
Hebrew calendar . According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "In fact, the Jewish feast was taken over into the Christian Easter celebration."
The English and German names, "Easter" and "Ostern", are not etymologically derived from
Pesach and are instead related to ancient names for the month of April, Eostremonat and Ostaramanoth respectively. According to the 8th century Christian
monk and historian
Bede, this month was dedicated to the
pagan fertility goddess Eostre. The Easter Bunny is often identified as a remnant of this fertility festival, although there is no evidence of any link.
Easter in the early Church
The observance of any special holiday throughout the Christian year is believed by some to be an innovation postdating the
Early Church. The ecclesiastical historian Socrates Scholasticus attributes the observance of Easter by the church to the perpetuation of local custom, "just as many other customs have been established", stating that neither
Jesus nor his
Apostles enjoined the keeping of this or any other festival. However, when , this is not a rejection or denigration of the celebration—which, given its currency in Scholasticus' time would be surprising—but is merely part of a defense of the diverse methods for computing its date. Indeed, although he describes the details of the Easter celebration as deriving from local custom, he insists the feast itself is universally observed.
Perhaps the earliest extant primary source referencing Easter is a 2nd century by Melito of Sardis, which characterizes the celebration as a well-established one.
A number of ecclesiastical historians, primarily
Eusebius, bishop Polycarp of Smyrna, by tradition a disciple of
John the Evangelist, disputed the computation of the date with bishop
Anicetus of Rome in what is now known as the Quartodecimanism controversy. The term
Quartodeciman is derived from
Latin, meaning fourteen, and refers to the practice of fixing the celebration of
Passover for Christians on the fourteenth day of Nisan in the Old Testament's
Hebrew Calendar . This was the original method of fixing the date of the Passover, which is to be a "perpetual ordinance". According to the Gospel of John , this was the
Friday that
Jesus was
crucified in
Jerusalem. Returning to the controversy, Anicetus became bishop of the church of Rome in the mid second century . Shortly thereafter, Polycarp visited Rome and among the topics discussed was when the pre-Easter fast should end. Those in
Asia held strictly to the computation from the Old Testament's
Hebrew calendar and ended the fast on the 14th day of Nisan, while the Roman custom was to continue the fast until the Sunday following. Neither Polycarp nor Anicetus was able to convert the other to his position—according to a rather confused account by Sozomen, both could claim Apostolic authority for their traditions—but neither did they consider the matter of sufficient importance to justify a schism, so they parted in peace leaving the question unsettled. However, a generation later bishop
Victor of Rome excommunicated bishop Polycrates of
Ephesus and the rest of the Asian bishops for their adherence to 14 Nisan. The excommunication was rescinded and the two sides reconciled upon the intervention of bishop
Irenaeus of Lyons, who reminded Victor of the tolerant precedent that had been established earlier. In the end, a uniform method of computing the date of Easter was not formally settled until the
First Council of Nicaea in 325 , although by that time the Roman timing for the observance had spread to most churches.
A number of early bishops rejected the practice of celebrating Easter, or more accurately Passover, on the first Sunday after Nisan 14. This conflict between Easter and Passover is often referred to as the "Paschal Controversy", .
The practice of those following Alexandria was to celebrate Easter on the first Sunday after the earliest fourteenth day of a lunar month that occurred on or after March 21. While since the Middle Ages this practice has sometimes been more succinctly phrased as
Easter is observed on the Sunday after the first full moon on or after the day of the vernal equinox, this does not reflect the actual ecclesiastical rules precisely. The reason for this is that the full moon involved is not an astronomical full moon, but an ecclesiastical moon. Determined from tables, it coincides more or less with the astronomical full moon. The ecclesiastical rules are:
- Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or after the day of the ecclesiastical vernal equinox
- this particular ecclesiastical full moon is the 14th day of a tabular lunation
- the ecclesiastical vernal equinox is always March 21
The Church of Rome used its own methods to determine Easter until the 6th century, when it may have adopted the Alexandrian method as converted into the
Julian calendar by
Dionysius Exiguus . Most churches in the
British Isles used a late
third century Roman method to determine Easter until they adopted the Alexandrian method at the Synod of Whitby in 664. Churches in western continental Europe used a late Roman method until the late 8th century during the reign of
Charlemagne, when they finally adopted the Alexandrian method. Since western churches now use the
Gregorian calendar to calculate the date and Eastern Orthodox churches use the original
Julian calendar, their dates are not usually aligned in the present day.
At a summit in
Aleppo,
Syria, in 1997, the World Council of Churches proposed a reform in the calculation of Easter which would have replaced an equation-based method of calculating Easter with direct astronomical observation; this would have side-stepped the calendar issue and eliminated the difference in date between the Eastern and Western churches. The reform was proposed for implementation starting in 2001, but it was not ultimately adopted by any member body.
A few clergymen of various denominations have advanced the notion of disregarding the moon altogether in determining the date of Easter; proposals include always observing the feast on the second Sunday in April, or always having seven Sundays between the Epiphany and
Ash Wednesday, producing the same result except that in leap years Easter could fall on April 7. These suggestions have yet to attract significant support, and their adoption in the future is considered unlikely.
Computations
The calculations for the date of Easter are somewhat complicated. See
computus for a discussion covering both the traditional tabular methods and more exclusively mathematical
algorithms such as the one developed by mathematician
Carl Friedrich Gauss.
In the Western Church, Easter has not fallen on the earliest of the 35 possible dates, March 22, since 1818, and will not do so again until 2285. It will, however, fall on March 23, just one day after its earliest possible date in 2008. Easter last fell on the latest possible date, April 25 in 1943, and will next fall on that date in 2038. However, it will fall on April 24, just one day before this latest possible date in 2011.
Historically, other forms of determining the holiday's date were also used. For example, Quartodecimanism was the practice of setting the holiday on the 14th day of the
Jewish month of Nisan, which is the day of preparation for
Passover.
Position in the church year
Western Christianity
In Western Christianity, Easter marks the end of the forty days of
Lent, a period of fasting and penitence in preparation for Easter which begins on
Ash Wednesday.
The week before Easter is very special in the Christian tradition: the Sunday before is
Palm Sunday, and the last three days before Easter are
Maundy Thursday or Holy Thursday,
Good Friday and
Holy Saturday . Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday respectively commemorate Jesus' entry in Jerusalem, the
Last Supper and the
Crucifixion. Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday are sometimes referred to as the Easter Triduum . In some countries, Easter lasts two days, with the second called "
Easter Monday". The week beginning with Easter Sunday is called Easter Week or the Octave of Easter, and each day is prefaced with "Easter", e.g. Easter Monday, Easter Tuesday, etc. Easter Saturday is therefore the Saturday
after Easter Sunday. The day before Easter is properly called Holy Saturday. Many churches start celebrating Easter late in the evening of Holy Saturday at a service called the
Easter Vigil.
Eastertide, the season of Easter, begins on Easter Sunday and lasts until the day of
Pentecost, seven weeks later.
Eastern Christianity
In Eastern Christianity, preparations begin with Great Lent. Following the fifth Sunday of Great Lent is Palm Week, which ends with
Lazarus Saturday. Lazarus Saturday officially brings Great Lent to a close, although the fast continues for the following week. After Lazarus Saturday comes Palm Sunday,
Holy Week, and finally Easter itself, or Pascha , and the fast is broken immediately after the Divine Liturgy. Easter is immediately followed by Bright Week, during which there is no fasting, even on Wednesday and Friday.
The Paschal Service consists of , which traditionally begins at midnight of Pascha morning. Placing the Paschal Divine Liturgy at midnight guarantees that no Divine Liturgy will come earlier in the morning, ensuring its place as the pre-eminent "Feast of Feasts" in the
liturgical year.
Religious observation of Easter
Western Christianity
The Easter festival is kept in many different ways among Western Christians. The traditional, liturgical observation of Easter, as practised among
Roman Catholics and some
Lutherans and
Anglicans begins on the night of
Holy Saturday with the
Easter Vigil. This, the most important liturgy of the year, begins in total darkness with the blessing of the Easter fire, the lighting of the large
Paschal candle and the chanting of the Exsultet or Easter Proclamation attributed to Saint
Ambrose of Milan. After this service of light, a number of readings from the Old Testament are read; these tell the stories of creation, the sacrifice of
Isaac, the crossing of the
Red Sea, and the foretold coming of the Messiah. This part of the service climaxes with the singing of the Alleluia and the proclamation of the
gospel of the
resurrection. A
sermon may be preached after the gospel. Then the focus moves from the lectern to the
font. Anciently, Easter was considered the most perfect time to receive
baptism, and this practice is alive in
Roman Catholicism, as it is the time when new members are initiated into the Church, and it is being revived in some other circles. Whether there are baptisms at this point or not, it is traditional for the congregation to renew the vows of their baptismal faith. This act is often sealed by the sprinkling of the congregation with holy water from the font. The Catholic
sacrament of
Confirmation is also celebrated at the Vigil. The Easter Vigil concludes with the celebration of the
Eucharist . Certain variations in the Easter Vigil exist: Some churches read the Old Testament lessons before the procession of the Paschal candle, and then read the gospel immediately after the Exsultet. Some churches prefer to keep this vigil very early on the Sunday morning instead of the Saturday night, particularly Protestant churches, to reflect the gospel account of the women coming to the tomb at dawn on the first day of the week. These services are known as the Sunrise service and often occur in outdoor setting such as the church's yard or a nearby park.
Additional celebrations are usually offered on Easter Sunday itself. Typically these services follow the usual order of Sunday services in a congregation, but also typically incorporate more highly festive elements. The music of the service, in particular, often displays a highly festive tone; the incorporation of brass instruments to suplement a congregation's usual instrumentation is common. Often a congregation's worship space is decorated with special banners and flowers .
In predominantly Roman Catholic
Philippines, the morning of Easter is marked with joyous celebration, the first being the dawn "Salubong", wherein large statues of Jesus and Mary are brought together to meet, imagining the first reunion of Jesus and his mother Mary after Jesus' Resurrection. This is followed by the joyous Easter Mass.
Some Christians wear their Sunday best to Church. This means a more formal dress and hats for some women.
Eastern Christianity
Easter is the fundamental and most important festival of the
Eastern and Oriental Orthodox. Every other religious festival on their calendars, including
Christmas, is secondary in importance to the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is reflected in the cultures of countries that are traditionally Orthodox Christian majority. Easter-connected social customs are native and rich. Christmas customs, on the other hand, are usually foreign imports, either from
Germany or the
USA.
Eastern Rite Catholics in
communion with the
Pope of Rome have similar emphasis in their calendars, and many of their liturgical customs are very similar.
This is not to say that Christmas and other elements of the Christian liturgical calendar are ignored. Instead, these events are all seen as necessary but
preliminary to the full climax of the Resurrection, in which all that has come before reaches fulfilment and fruition. Pascha is the primary act that fulfils the purpose of Christ's ministry on earth—to defeat death by dying and to purify and exalt humanity by voluntarily assuming and overcoming human frailty. This is succinctly summarized by the Paschal troparion, sung repeatedly during Pascha until the Apodosis of Pascha :
- Christ is risen from the dead,
- Trampling down death by death,
- And upon those in the tombs
- Bestowing life!
Celebration of the holiday begins with the "anti-celebration" of Great Lent. In addition to fasting, almsgiving, and prayer, Orthodox are supposed to reduce all entertainment and non-essential activity, gradually eliminating them until Holy Friday. Traditionally, on the evening of Holy Saturday, the Midnight Office is celebrated shortly after 11:00 pm. At its completion all light in the church building is extinguished. A new flame is struck in the altar, or the priest lights his candle from a perpetual lamp kept burning there, and he then lights candles held by deacons or other assistants, who then go to light candles held by the congregation. Entirely lit by candle, the priest and congregation process around the church building, re-entering ideally at the stroke of midnight, whereupon Matins begins immediately followed by the Paschal Hours and then the Divine Liturgy. Immediately after the Liturgy it is customary for the congregation to share a meal, essentially an agape dinner
The day after, Easter Sunday proper, there is no liturgy, since the liturgy for that day has already been celebrated. Instead, in the afternoon, it is often traditional to hold "Agape vespers". In this service, it has become customary during the last few centuries for the priest and members of the congregation to read a portion of the Gospel of John in as many languages as they can manage.
For the remainder of the week , all fasting is prohibited, and the customary greeting is "Christ is risen!", to be responded with "Truly He is risen!"
Non-religious Easter traditions
As with many other Christian dates, the celebration of Easter extends beyond the church. Since its origins, it has been a time of celebration and feasting. Today it is commercially important, seeing wide sales of
greeting cards and confectionery such as chocolate Easter eggs, marshmallow bunnies,
Peeps, and
jelly beans.
Despite the religious preeminence of Easter, in many traditionally Christian countries
Christmas is now a more prominent event in the calendar year, being unrivaled as a festive season, commercial opportunity, and time of family gathering — even for those of no or only nominal faith. Easter's relatively modest secular observances place it a distant second or third among the less religiously inclined where Christmas is so prominent.
America
Throughout North America, the Easter holiday has been partially secularized, so that some families participate only in the attendant revelry, central to which is decorating Easter eggs on Saturday evening and hunting for them Sunday morning, by which time they have been mysteriously hidden all over the house and garden. According to the children's stories, the eggs were hidden overnight and other treats delivered by the Easter Bunny in an Easter basket which children find waiting for them when they wake up. The Easter Bunny's motives for doing this are seldom clarified. Many families in America will attend
Sunday Mass or services in the morning and then participate in a feast or party in the afternoon.
Scandinavia
In
Norway, in addition to skiing in the mountains and painting eggs for decorating, it is tradition to solve murders at Easter. All the major television channels show crime and detective stories , magazines print stories where the readers can try to figure out who did it, and many new books are published. Even the milk cartons change to have murder stories on their sides. Another tradition is
Yahtzee games.
Sweden's traditions include egg painting/gathering and door-to-door collection of candy by small children dressed as witches. Additionally, fake feathers and little decorations are placed on branches in a vase. For lunch/dinner on
Holy Saturday, families traditionally feast on a smörgåsbord of herring, salmon, potatoes, eggs and other kinds of food. In Finland, the Palm Sunday is feasted by
virpominen: young children go around from house to house, gently swatting the inhabitants with decorated twigs of
willow. This stems from an old Orthodox tradition. The traditional meals are
mämmi in the Lutheran Finland and pasha in the Orthodox parts of the country.
Netherlands
In the eastern part of the Netherlands , Easter Fires are lit on Easter Day at sunset.
Central Europe
In the
Czech Republic,
Hungary and
Slovakia, a tradition of whipping is carried out on
Easter Monday. In the morning, males whip females with a special handmade whip called
pomlázka or
korbác . The pomlázka/korbác consists of eight, twelve or even twenty-four withies and is usually from half a metre to two metres long and decorated with coloured ribbons at the end. It must be mentioned that while whipping can be painful, the purpose is not to cause suffering. Rather, the purpose is for males to exhibit their attraction to females; unvisited females can even feel offended. The whipped female gives a coloured
egg to the male as a sign of her thanks and forgiveness. A legend says that females should be whipped in order to keep their health and fertility during whole next year. In some regions the females can get revenge in the afternoon when they can pour a bucket of cold water on any male. The habit slightly varies across the Czech Republic. A similar tradition existed in
Poland , but it is now little more than an all-day waterfight.
In
Hungary ,
perfume or perfumed water is often sprinkled in exchange for an
Easter egg.
Easter controversies
The Easter Controversy
The controversy that is explicitly called
The Easter Controversy covers many arguments concerning the proper date to celebrate Easter.
Christian denominations that do not observe Easter
Easter traditions deemed "pagan" by Reformation leaders, along with Christmas celebrations, were among the first casualties of the Protestant Reformation. These holidays were eventually restored . Some Christians , however, continue to reject the celebration of Easter , because they believe them to be irrevocably tainted with
paganism and
idolatry.
Their rejection of these traditions is based partly on the words of 2 Corinthians 6:14-16. "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people."
That is also the view of
Jehovah's Witnesses, who instead observe a yearly commemorative service of the
Last Supper and subsequent death of Christ on the evening of 14 Nisan, as they calculate it derived from the lunar
Hebrew Calendar. It is commonly referred to, in short, by many Witnesses as simply "The Memorial". Jehovah's Witnesses claim that such verses as Luke 22:19, 20 constitute a commandment to remember the death of Christ, and they do so on a yearly basis just as the Passover was celebrated yearly by the Jews.
Some fundamentalist groups, including many independent and
Baptist churches, maintain that Easter and Christmas are of pagan origins. As such, these celebrations were originally designed to worship pagan gods, and therefore are an affront to God. To these Christians, Easter, Christmas and other festivals are extra-biblical, and therefore should not be part of Christian worship. For Baptist Easter belief, see below.
Baptists in particular, maintain that the Last Supper was shown in the Gospels to portray Jesus urging the gathered apostles to share bread and the "fruit of the vine" . He said, "...do this in remembrance of me." Many groups feel that Easter, or as they prefer to call it, "Resurrection Sunday ", is properly regarded with great joy, but marking not the day itself, but remembering and rejoicing in the message it commemorates--in Christ's resurrection. In this spirit, these Christians teach that each day and all Sabbaths should be kept holy, in Christ's teachings.
Other groups, such as the Sabbatarian Church of God, claim to keep the feasts and commandments of God given in the Bible, which includes a Christian Passover that lacks most of the practices or symbols associated with Western Easter and retains more features of the Passover observed by Jesus Christ at The Last Supper.
Etymology and the origins of Easter traditions
In his 'De Temporum Ratione' the
Venerable Bede wrote that the month Eostremonat was so named because of a goddess, Eostre, who had formerly been worshipped in that month. In recent years some scholars have suggested that a lack of supporting documentation for this goddess might indicate that Bede assumed her existence based on the name of the month. Others note that Bede's status as "the Father of English History", having been the author of the first substantial history of England ever written, might make the lack of additional mention for a goddess whose worship had already died out by Bede's time unsurprising. The debate receives considerable attention because the name 'Easter' is derived from Eostremonat, and thus, according to Bede, from the pagan goddess Eostre. Some authors have conluded that Easter has never been a pagan holiday but is shortened form of the German word for resurrection, auferstehen/auferstehung.
Jakob Grimm took up the question of Eostre in his Deutsche Mythologie of 1835, noting that Ostaramanoth was etymologically related to Eostremonat and writing of various landmarks and customs related to the goddess Ostara in Germany. Again, because of a lack of written documentation, critics suggest that Grimm took Bede's mention of a goddess Eostre at face value and constructed the goddess Ostara around existing Germanic customs which may have arisen independently. Others point to Grimm's stated intent to gather and record oral traditions which might otherwise be lost as explanation for the lack of further documentation. Amongst other traditions, Grimm connected the 'Osterhase' and
Easter Eggs to the goddess Ostara/Eostre. He also cites various place names in Germany as being evidence of Ostara, but critics contend that the close etymological relationship between Ostara and the words for 'east' and 'dawn' could mean that these place names referred to either of those two things rather than a goddess.
Bede's
Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum is a work in Latin [i] by the Venerable Bede [i] on ...
contains a letter from
Pope Gregory I to Saint Mellitus, who was then on his way to
England to conduct missionary work among the
heathen Anglo-Saxons. The Pope converting heathens is easier if they are allowed to retain the outward forms of their traditional pagan practices and traditions, while recasting those traditions spiritually towards Christianity instead of to their indigenous gods , "to the end that, whilst some gratifications are outwardly permitted them, they may the more easily consent to the inward consolations of the grace of God". The Pope sanctioned such conversion tactics as
biblically acceptable, pointing out that God did much the same thing with the ancient
Israelites and their pagan sacrifices. This practice might explain the incorporation of Eostre traditions into the Christian holiday.
However, the giving of eggs at spring festivals was not restricted to
Germanic peoples and could be found among the
Persians,
Romans,
Jews and the
Armenians. They were a widespread symbol of rebirth and resurrection and thus might have been adopted from any number of sources.
Easter as a Sumerian festival
Some suggest an etymological relationship between Eostre and the
Sumerian goddess
Ishtar and the possibility that aspects of an ancient festival accompanied the name, claiming that the worship of Bel and Astarte was anciently introduced into Britain, and that the
hot cross buns of Good Friday and dyed eggs of Easter Sunday figured in the Chaldean rites just as they do now.
At best, any connection between Ishtar and Easter is geographically and linguistically distant, and tangential.
Claiming a connection between Ishtar and Easter also ignores the fact that Easter is called "Passover" in almost every other language in the world. Examples of this are the Hebrew
Pesach; the Greek
Paskha; the Latin
Pascha; the Italian
Pasqua; the Spanish
La Pascua; and Scots Gaelic
An Casca. The holiday was not called "Easter" until the 8th Century, by which time it had already been in existence for 700 years.
There is the additional problem that the very lands where Ishtar was once known have never been known to use a name like "Easter" for this or any other spring holiday.
Miscellaneous
Word for "Easter" in various languages
Names related to Eostremonat
Names derived from the Hebrew Pesach Passover
