EASTER

The most joyous of Christian festivals, and one of the first celebrated by the Christians, commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ on the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox. The English word "Easter," corresponding to the German "Oster," reveals the association of many Easter customs with those of the Teutonic tribes of central Europe. When Christianity reached these people it incorporated many of their heathen rites into the great Christian feast day. Easter month, corresponding to our April, was dedicated to Eostre, or Ostara, goddess of the spring. There was in common the time of spring and the triumph of life over death.

The practice of eating eggs on Easter Sunday and giving them as gifts to friends and children probably arose because, in the earlier days of the church, eggs were forbidden food during Lent (the 40 days before Easter) and were therefore always eaten on Easter Sunday. But the custom of coloring eggs goes back to the ancient Egyptians and Persians, who practiced this custom during their spring festival.

The Easter hare, or bunny, comes from antiquity as well. The hare is associated with the moon in the legends of of ancient Egypt. It belongs to the night when it comes out to feed. It is born with its eyes opened and, like the moon, is "the open-eyed watcher of the skies." Through the fact that the Egyptian word for hare, "un," means also "open" and "period," the hare became associated with the idea of periodicity, both lunar and human, and so became a symbol of fertility and of the renewal of life. As such, the hare became linked with the Easter, or paschal, eggs. In the U.S. the Easter rabbit is fabled to lay the eggs in nests prepared for it or to hide them for children to find.

Although Easter was celebrated very early in the church, its date was not established until A.D. 325 when Constantine convened the Council at Nicea, where it was decided that it should be observed on the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox, to be fixed each year at Alexandria, then the center of astronomical science. The date is an approximation, and may vary. This means that its date may vary as much as 35 days!

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian