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Easter: Celebrate Easter
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Easter should be the most openly joyful time of celebration of the church year. Celebrated against the background of the shadows and darkness of Lent and Holy Week, this season truly becomes a living expression of the hope that God has brought into the world through the death and resurrection of Jesus. Since this hope of renewal and new life, both present and future, is at the heart of the Good News that the church is commissioned to proclaim and live in the world, every possible avenue of proclaiming that Good News should be utilized. No doubt that is why many traditionally non-liturgical churches are increasingly recovering the value of the various traditions of the Easter Season as a means of bearing witness to their Faith. Seen as Proclamation, the various aspects of worship during this season can become vehicles for God’s grace and transforming work in the world, and among his people.
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E[A]ster is the time of springtime festivals, a time to welcome back the Tulips, the Crocuses and the Daffodils. Its a time of new suits, new dresses and patent leather shoes. A time for Christians to celebrate the life and resurrection of Christ. And a time of chocolate bunnies, marshmallow chicks, and colored eggs!
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The precise date of Easter has at times been a matter for contention. At the First Council of Nicaea in 325 it was decided that all Christians would celebrate Easter on the same day, which would be a Sunday. It is probable that no method of determining the date was specified by the Council. (No contemporary account of the Council's decisions has survived.) Instead, the matter seems to have been referred to the church of Alexandria, which city had the best reputation for scholarship at the time. Epiphanius of Salamis wrote in the mid-4th Century:
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A very popular spring holiday, Easter has roots not only in Jewish and Christian traditions, but ... in ancient pagan beliefs. Although Easter is ostensibly viewed as a Christian holiday today, much of it is arguably more pagan than Christian — and many of the Christian elements have pagan parallels as well.Some Christians don’t celebrate Easter, believing that the Christian takeover of this pagan holiday resulted in an unacceptable adoption of pagan themes, beliefs, and practices.
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The Christian festival of Easter incorporates many pagan, or pre-Christian, traditions. The origin of its name is unknown. Scholars believe that it probably comes from Ēastre, the Anglo-Saxon name of a Germanic goddess of spring and fertility. This derivation was proposed in the 8th century by English scholar Saint Bede. Ēastre’s festival was celebrated on the day of the vernal equinox—the first day of spring. Traditions associated with her festival survive today in the Easter rabbit, a symbol of fertility, and in colored Easter eggs.
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In the Christian church year, the two major cycles of seasons, Christmas and Easter, are far more than a single day of observance. Like Christmas, Easter itself is a period of time rather than just a day. It is actually a seven-week season of the church year called Eastertide, the Great Fifty Days that begins at sundown the evening before Easter Sunday (the Easter Vigil) and lasts for six more Sundays until Pentecost Sunday (some traditions use the term Pentecost to include these Fifty Days between Easter and Pentecost Sunday). These seven Sundays are called the Sundays of Easter, climaxing on the seventh Sunday, the Sunday before Pentecost Sunday. This is often celebrated as Ascension Day (actually the 40th day after Easter Sunday, which always falls on Thursday, but in churches that do not have daily services it is usually observed the following Sunday). Ascension Day marks not only the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, but his exaltation from servanthood to Ruler and Lord as the fitting climax of Resurrection Day (Eph 1:20-22).
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Celebrate Easter