Insight - Easter - (EIU Office of Civil Rights and Diversity)

There are many days associated with the Easter Holiday. Here is a brief description of a few of them:

Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday is the Sunday before Easter Day. It is to commemorate Jesus's last journey to Jerusalem, when people cut palm branches to spread on his path as he rode to the city.

Holy Thursday
Holy Thursday also referred to as Maundy Thursday. In Europe the Christian monarchs used to wash the feet of poor people on the Thursday before Easter in memory of Jesus's Act. Also on this day Jesus ate and drank with his followers. This meal became known as the Last Supper, because Jesus died soon after.

Good Friday
Good Friday is the commemoration of the Trial and Crucifixion of Jesus. In some countries the bells are tolled while in other countries they are silenced until Sunday.

Holy Saturday
Holy Saturday is part of the period mourning which begins on Good Friday. For Christians in countries such as Bulgaria, Greece and Poland, Holy Saturday is a day of cooking, ready for the feasting the following day to celebrate the Resurrection.

Easter Day
Easter day is the Commemoration of the Resurrection of Jesus. A symbol of the Resurrection is the egg out of which a bird hatches.

Easter Monday
Easter Monday is day of sports and games of various kinds. In Britain Football is the game played. Also the game of egg shackling in which you hold a hard-boiled egg firmly in your hand and hit against another opponents.

Pentecost
Eastertide goes on until Whit Sunday, fifty days after Easter day. The day is also known as Pentecost.

Ascension
Ascension is the fortieth day from Easter Day. It was on this day that Jesus ascended into Heaven. Ascension Day falls on a Thursday. The Paschal candle which was lit on Easter Day to mark the resurrection is put out to mark Jesus's departure from Earth.

Easter, the principal festival of the Christian church year, celebrates the Resurrection of Jesus Christ on the third day after his Crucifixion. The origins of Easter date to the beginnings of Christianity.

Many of the cultural historians find, in the celebration of Easter, a convergence of the three traditions - Pagan, Hebrew and Christian.

According to St. Bede, an English historian of the early 8th century, Easter owes its origin to the old Teutonic mythology. It was derived from the name Eostre, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, to whom the month of April was dedicated. The festival of Eostre was celebrated at the vernal equinox, when the day and night gets an equal share of the day.

The English name "Easter" is much newer. When the early English Christians wanted others to accept Christianity, they decided to use the name Easter for this holiday so that it would match the name of the old spring celebration. This made it more comfortable for other people to accept Christianity.

But it is pointed out by some that the Easter festival, as celebrated today, is related with the Hebrew tradition, the Jewish Passover. This is being celebrated during Nisan, the first month of the Hebrew lunar year.

According to the New Testament, Christ was crucified on the eve of Passover and shortly afterward rose from the dead. In consequence, the Easter festival commemorated Christ's resurrection. In time, a difference over the date of the Easter festival arose. Those of Jewish origin celebrated the resurrection immediately following the Passover festival, which, according to their Babylonian lunar calendar, fell on the evening of the full moon (the 14th day in the month of Nisan, the first month of the year); by their reckoning, Easter, from year to year, fell on different days of the week.

Christians of Gentile origin, however, wished to commemorate the resurrection on the first day of the week, Sunday; by their method, Easter occurred on the same day of the week, but from year to year it fell on different dates.

An important historical result of the difference in reckoning the date of Easter was that the Christian churches in the East, which were closer to the birthplace of the new religion and in which old traditions were strong, observed Easter according to the date of the Passover festival. The churches of the West, descendants of Greco-Roman civilization, celebrated Easter on a Sunday.

Constantine the Great, Roman emperor, convoked the Council of Nicaea in 325. The council unanimously ruled that the Easter festival should be celebrated throughout the Christian world on the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox; and that if the full moon should occur on a Sunday and thereby coincide with the Passover festival, Easter should be commemorated on the Sunday following. Coincidence of the feasts of Easter and Passover was thus avoided.

The Council of Nicaea also decided that the calendar date of Easter was to be calculated at Alexandria, then the principal astronomical center of the world. The accurate determination of the date, however, proved an impossible task in view of the limited knowledge of the 4th-century world. The principal astronomical problem involved was the discrepancy, called the epact, between the solar year and the lunar year. The chief calendric problem was a gradually increasing discrepancy between the true astronomical year and the Julian calendar then in use.

Because the Easter holiday affects a varied number of secular affairs in many countries, it has long been urged as a matter of convenience that the movable dates of the festival be either narrowed in range or replaced by a fixed date in the manner of Christmas. In 1923 the problem was referred to the Holy See, which has found no canonical objection to the proposed reform. In 1928 the British Parliament enacted a measure allowing the Church of England to commemorate Easter on the first Sunday after the second Saturday in April. Despite these steps toward reform, Easter continues to be a movable feast.

Easter - March 27, 2005