Resurrection and Easter

A high place that lifts the souls of mere mortals on the wings of hope rests on resurrection.  Traditionally, resurrection is taken to mean as that state of physical return from the dead.  So there will always be an Easter after Good Friday, or where goes the meaning of hope?

The concept of a god who dies and rises is old and pervasive in ancient literature.  The ancient Greeks ascribed to Adonis in its myths as having come back to life while the Egyptians celebrated yearly the death and return of Osiris.

Resurrection, techiat hameitim for the Jews, is one of the main principles of Orthodox Judaism.  Its closely related religion, Christianity, holds the tradition that there will be a general resurrection of the dead when time ends.  Catholics embrace it in the Credo.

Today is deemed as the most important Christian festivity when the essence of Christian faith— the Redeemer is risen after dying on the Cross, is observed.

In a way, the beginnings of today’s observance make Resurrection and Easter synonymous.    Yet Easter had its pagan origins in the rites of spring.  Its old spelling is Eastre, the name of the Saxon spring goddess.  Eastre’s festival happened to match the Christian observance of Christ’s resurrection.  Thus, like most current Christian observances, the pagan Easter celebration took on Christian dimensions.

In AD 325, when the Council of Nicaea was convened, it was ruled that Easter shall be celebrated on the first Sunday after the vernal equinox, a time in spring when night and day are approximately equal in length anywhere on earth, made possible by the sun crossing on the equator, with the earth’s specific tilting a contributing factor.  (There are two equinoxes, the vernal and autumnal.)

Meanwhile, the so-called “ecclesiastical vernal equinox” had always been dated on March 21 (as the autumnal equinox is September 21, though for those in our country who care to remember, the date has another connotation.  Martial Law was declared in the early ‘70s on this date.  Years after, September 21 became a national holiday called National Thanksgiving Day.)

Anyway, spring and its equinox contributed thus to Easter being celebrated on any Sunday between March 22 and April 25.

The Easter bunny had the same pagan beginnings, the rabbit being the goddess Eastre’s earthly symbol.  Easter eggs, on the other hand, were gift items during those same pagan festivities.  The egg is taken as a symbol of the beginning of life as spring is the beginning of life after a dreary winter.

There are Easter symbols though which are more Christian rather than pagan in origin.  An empty cross is for the Resurrection of Christ and the triumph of life over death.

The lamb is another symbol of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross.  Thus Christians call Jesus Christ “Lamb of God.” Obviously this is based on the ancient universal practice of sacrificing animals to the gods, which also became the basis for the idiomatic “sacrificial lamb” in the English lexicon.

Commerce made Easter bunnies and eggs slowly creep into our own milieu.  Yet something in us gear up more for Good Friday, on Christ’s death and our forgiveness and atonement.

Hereabouts, some rare souls even literally follow the Way of the Cross and go as far as having themselves nailed on a cross.  (Luckily, their friends who act as Roman soldiers and fulfill the bizarre task of hammering the nails see to it that the nails are stainless steel.  If things go awry, their crucified friends may die on their own crosses, but not of tetanus.)  And the world still has its Good Friday flagellants.

But then faith, and its greatest day of Christian celebration this Sunday, is a personal matter.  Believer, zealot or secularist, at the end of the day faith is one’s very personal relationship with his God.

The pagan celebration of spring seamlessly blended with the Christian observance of Christ’s return.  No wonder poet Christina Georgina Rosetti expressed loss and recovery, death and resurrection, with the image of spring.  And no one is less of a believer because of it.

‘…My life is like a frozen thing,/ No bud nor greenness can I see:/ Yet rise it shal? the sap of spring;/ O Jesus, rise in me.’

(2006)