Ten observations about Easter – The season of penance and prayer

Do we Christianize Pagan Culture?

Easter is the most important holiday for Christians who commemorate the Death and Resurrection of Christ and days following his crucifixion.

It believed by Christians that Jesus, the son of God, died for everyone’s wrong-doings and then came back to life three days later to defeat death and evil: so if you believe in Him you will live forever in Heaven.

1.     Lent is the forty-six day period just prior to Easter Sunday and it begins on Ash Wednesday as the first day of Lent. The name comes from the tradition of putting a small cross of ash on the forehead at Ash Wednesday church services. This is a sign of confession and helps people to remember that they rely on God for forgiveness from their sins.

2.    Easter was originally a Pagan Festival practices for several hundred years. This seasonal celebration was not called “Easter.” prior to the fourth century. The early Christians took over the festivals and turned the pagan festivals of new life to mean the new life that Jesus gave the world when he rose from the dead.

3.     Christians observed Pascha, Christian Passover, in the spring of the year. Adapted from Jewish Passover, Pascha was a festival of redemption. As Jews, these early followers of Jesus celebrated both their liberation from slavery in Egypt, and their new liberation from the power of death itself.

4.     Mardi Gras (French for “Fat Tuesday”) is a celebration, sometimes called “Carnival,” practiced around the world, on the Tuesday prior to Ash Wednesday. It was designed as a way to “get it all out” before the sacrifices of Lent began. New Orleans is the focal point of Mardi Gras celebrations in the U.S. Read about the religious meanings of the Lenten Season

5.     As Christianity spread throughout the Roman world, however, the celebration became more and more a distinctly Christian one. But there also developed some disagreement about when and how the holiday should be observed. One of the principal reasons for organizing the council of Nicea in 325 CE was to set a firm date for the celebration.

6.     Council of Nicaea was convened by Emperor Constantine issuing the Easter Rule which dictated that Easter shall be celebrated on the first Sunday that occurs after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox.

7.     As a seasonal celebration of surviving the harshness of winter the European pagan festival of ‘Ostara’ celebrated new life called “The Return of Spring Festival” came to be known as “Easter,” a name derived, from “Eostre”, or “Eastre” the Mother Goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe.

8.     The Symbols reflect definitive elements of pre-Christian religious practice converted  and incorporated into the Easter traditions.

• The Easter Bunny originated with the pagan festival of Eastre  honoring the Goddess, Eastre,  and worshiped by the Anglo-Saxons through earthly symbol of the rabbit.
• The Easter Egg predates the Christian holiday of Easter.  The exchange of eggs in the springtime is a custom that was centuries old when Easter was first celebrated by Christians as a symbol of rebirth in most cultures. Today, children hunt colored eggs and place them in Easter baskets.
  

9.     Palm Sunday is the first Day of Holy Week. It is when Christians remember how Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey. It is called Palm Sunday because the people were so happy to see Jesus and knew that he was very important, so they took branches from the Palm and Olive Trees that lined the road. They waved them in the air shouting ‘Hosanna’ (which means ‘God Saves’ in Hebrew) and put some of them on the road to make it easier for the donkey to walk on the rocky road.

10.    Easter is a season rather than just a day in other cultures and religious practiced a seven-week season called Eastertide.  It is a period of fifty days beginning at sundown on the eve of Easter Sunday and lasting for six more Sundays until Pentecost.  Interchangeably referred to as Eastertide, or the Easter Season, or Paschal Time.

Tradition holds that Jesus “ascended” to God on the 40th day after the resurrection. On the church calendar this day, always a Thursday, is referred to as Ascension Day. In practice, the Ascension is sometimes “transferred” to the sixth Sunday of Easter. The season officially ends on Pentecost Sunday, which Christians think of as the “birthday of the church.” This holiday celebrates the presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church and indeed, the world.

Feel free to add your comments to this POV. My goal is to educate and present information that allows for a larger frame of reference to the events we practice. Before anyone goes and calls me names because these specific facts and tidbits of inforamation is not what you know to be the truth, leave your comment and be mindful of the season.

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