Easter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Easter is generally accounted the most important holiday of the Christian year, observed each spring to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead after his crucifixion. (See Good Friday.) (Easter can also refer to the season of the church year, lasting for nearly two months, which follows this holiday. See Easter (season).) The festival's name in English (and other Germanic languages) is said to derive from Eostre, a pagan goddess, whose primary festival fell in the spring and in whose month, 'Eostremonat,' Easter generally fell. (The etymology is contested.) However, in most other languages (see list at bottom of page), the holiday's name is derived from Pesach, the Hebrew name of Passover, a Jewish holiday to which it is intimately linked. Easter depends on Passover not only for much of its symbolic meaning but also for its position in the calendar; the Last Supper shared by Jesus and his disciples before his crucifixion is generally thought of as a Passover seder.
In Western christianity Easter Day always falls on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25. The following day, Easter Monday, is recognized as a legal holiday in most countries with a significant Christian tradition (with the notable exception of the United States).
| Table of contents |
|
2 Easter's Position in the Church Year 3 The Religious Observation of Easter 4 Easter Outside the Church Services 5 Miscellanea 6 External links |
The date of Easter
Easter and the holidays that are related to it are moveable feasts, in that they do not fall on a fixed date in the Gregorian or Julian calendars (which follow the motion of the Sun and the seasons). Instead, they are based on a lunar calendar like that of the Jewish year. The precise date of Easter has often been a matter for contention.
At the First Council of Nicaea in 325 it was decided that Easter would be celebrated on the same date throughout the Church. The specific method (the Sunday after the 14th day of the first lunar month of spring) was not determined by the Council. Instead, the matter was referred to Alexandria. The practice of this city was essentially Easter is observed the Sunday after the first full moon on or after the day of the vernal equinox. Eventually, all churches accepted the Alexandrian method of computing Easter, which set the northern hemisphere vernal equinox at 21 March (the actual equinox may fall one or two days earlier or later) and determined the date of the full moon using the Metonic cycle. Since western churches now use the Gregorian calendar to calculate the date and Eastern Orthodox churches the original Julian calendar, their dates are not usually aligned in the present day.
At a summit in Aleppo, Syria, in 1997, the World Council of Churches proposed a reform in the calculation of Easter which would have replaced an equation-based method of calculating Easter with direct astronomical observation; this would have side-stepped the calendar issue and and eliminated the difference in date between the Eastern and Western churches. The reform was propsed for implementation starting in 2001, but it was not ultimately adopted by any member body. See Reform of the date of Easter.
A list of Easter's date for the next several years is at the bottom of the page.
Computations
The calculations for the date of Easter can be somewhat complicated. See computus for a discussion covering both the traditional tabular methods and more exclusively mathematical algorithms such as the one developed by the famous mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss.
In the western church Easter has not fallen on the earliest of the 35 possible dates, March 22, since 1818, and will not do so again until 2285; it fell on the latest possible date, April 25 most recently in 1943, and will next fall on that date in 2038.
Historically, other forms of determining the holiday's date were also used. For example, Quartodecimanism was the practice of setting the holiday on the 14th day of the Jewish month of Nisan.
External link:
Easter's Position in the Church Year
Western Christianity
In Western Christianity, Easter marks the end of the forty days of Lent, a period of fasting and penitence in preparation for Easter which begins on Ash Wednesday and ends at Easter Sunday. (See under Lent for more about its length.) The week before Easter is very special in the Christian tradition: the Sunday before is Palm Sunday, and the last three days before Easter are Maundy Thursday or Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday (sometimes referred to as Silent Saturday). Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday respectively commemmorate Jesus's entry in Jerusalem, the Last Supper and the Crucifixion. Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday are sometimes referred to as the Triduum (Latin for "Three Days"). In some countries Easter lasts two days, with the second called "Easter Monday". Many churches start celebrating Easter late in the evening of Holy Saturday at a service called the Easter Vigil.
The Season of Easter begins on Easter Sunday and lasts until the day of Pentecost, seven weeks later.
Eastern Christianity
In Eastern Christianity, preparations begin with Great Lent. Following the fifth Sunday of Great Lent is Palm Week, which ends with Lazarus Saturday. Lazarus Saturday officially brings Great Lent to a close, although the fast continues for the following week. After Lazarus Saturday comes Palm Sunday, Holy Week, and finally Easter itself, or Pascha (Παδχα), and the fast is broken immediately after the Divine Liturgy. Easter is immediately followed by Bright Week, during which there is no fasting, even on Wednesday and Friday.
The Paschal Divine Liturgy generally takes place around midnight, into the early morning of Pascha. Placing the Paschal Divine Liturgy at midnight guarantees that no Divine Liturgy will come earlier in the morning, ensuring its place as the preeminent "Feast of Feasts" in the liturgical year.
The Religious Observation of Easter
Western Christianity
Eastern Christianity
Easter is the fundamental and most important festival of the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox. Every other religious festival on their calendars, including Christmas is at best, secondary in importance to the celebration of the Ressurection of the Lord. This is reflected in the cultures of countries that are traditionally Orthodox Christian majority. Easter-connected social customs are native and rich. Christmas customs, on the other hand, are usually foreign imports, either from Germany or the USA.
This is not to say that Christmas and other elements of the Christian liturgical calendar are ignored. Instead, these events are all seen as necessary but preliminary to the full climax of the Ressurection, in which all that has come before reaches fulfillment and fruition. Pascha (Easter) is the primary act that fulfills the purpose of Christ's ministry on earth--to defeat death by dying and to purify and exalt humanity by voluntarily assuming and overcoming human frailty. This is succinctly summarized by the Orthodox Easter hymn "Christ is Risen":
| English |
Greek |
Slavonic |
|
Christ is risen from the dead, |
Χρστος άνεστη εκ νεκρον, |
Христос воскресе из мертвых, |
The day after, Easter Sunday proper, there is no liturgy, since the liturgy for that day has already been done. Instead, in the afternoon, it is often traditional to hold "Agape vespers". In this service, it is customary for the priest and members of the congregation to read a portion of the Gospel of John (20:19-25 or 19-31) in as many languages as they can manage.
For the remainder of the week (known as "Bright Week"), all fasting is prohibited, and the customary greeting is "Christ is risen!", to be responded with "Truly He is risen!"
The Orthodox greetings for Easter around the world
- Germanic Languages
- Romance Languages
- Slavic Languages
- Belarussian - (Khristos Uvoskros! Zaprowdu Uvoskros!)
- Bulgarian - Христос Возкресе! Воистина Возкресе! (Christos Vozkrese! Voistina Vozkrese!)
- Czech - Kristus Vstal A Mrtvych! Opravdi Vstoupil!
- Russian - Христос Воскресе! Воистину Воскресе! (Christos Voskrese! Voistinu Voskrese!)
- Serbian - Христос Воскресе! Ваистину Воскресе! (Christos Voskrese! Vaistinu Voskrese!)
- Slovak - Kristus vstal zmŕtvych! Skutočne vstal!
- Ukrainian - Христос Воскрес! Воістину Воскрес! (Christos Voskres! Voistinu Voskres!)
- Gaelic Languages
- Brythonic Languages
- Arabic - Al-Masih-Qam! Hakkan Qam!
- Esperanto - Kristos Levigis! Vere Levigis!
- Finnish - Kristus nousi kuolleista! Tortisesti nousi!
- Greek - Χριστος Aνερτη! Aληθως Aνεστη! (Christos Anesti! Aleithos Anesti!)
- Hawaiian - Ua ala hou Žo kristo! Ua ala Ži Žo no Žoia!
- Indonesian - KrIstus tElah Bangkit! Benar dia telah Bangkit!
- Japanese - Harisutosu Siochatsu! Makoto-ni Siochatsu!
- Luganda Kristo Ajukkide! Kweli Ajukkide!
- Mandarin - 基督復活了 他確實復活了 (Ji-du fu-huo-le! Zhen-de Ta fu-huo-le!)
- Nigerian - Jesu Kristi Ebiliwo! Ezia oŽ Biliwo!
- Swahili - Kristo Amefufukka! Kweli Amefufukka!
- Turkish - Hristos diril-Di! Hakikaten diril-Di!
Anti-Easter Christians
Some Christian fundamentalists reject nearly all the customs surrounding Easter, believing them to be irrevocably tainted with paganism and idolatry. The Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate Easter at all, believing it to be entirely a pagan invention [1].
Fundamentalist flights of fancy about the entire holiday being named for the Babylonian goddess Ishtar cannot be reconciled with the simple fact that, in lands where she was known, the holiday was never called by any name resembling hers in the least.
Easter Outside the Church Services
As with other Christian dates, the celebration of Easter extends beyond the church. Since its origins, it has been a time of celebration and feasting. Today it is commercially important, seeing wide sales of greeting cards and confectionery such as chocolate Easter eggs, marshmallow bunnies, Peeps, and jelly beans.
In the United States, the Easter holiday has been effectively secularized, so that many American families participate only in the attendant revelry, central to which is decorating Easter eggs on Saturday evening and hunting for them Sunday morning, by which time they have been mysteriously hidden all over the house and garden. According to the children's stories, the eggs were hidden overnight and other treats delivered by the Easter Bunny in an Easter basket which children find waiting for them when they wake up. (The Easter Bunny's motives for doing this are seldom clarified.) However, these secular rituals often have origins in Christian symbolism; the eggs, for example, can be taken as signs of rebirth and resurrection. Some of Easter's symbols can be traced back still further; some (such as the Easter bunny, originally a hare) seem to have their origins in earlier pagan rituals celebrating nature's springtime rebirth; while others can be traced back to Jewish customs (such as the lamb often eaten at Easter feasts, which echos Passover's paschal lamb). (Eggs can be related to both pre-Christian traditions.)
Miscellanea
The word "Easter" in other languages
Names derived from the goddess Eostre:
Names derived from the Hebrew Pesach (Passover):- Latin Pascha (or Festa Paschalia)
- Greek Πάσχα (Paskha)
- Bulgarian Пасха (Paskha)
- Danish Paaske
- Dutch Pasen
- Finnish Pääsiäinen
- French Paques
- Irish Caisc
- Italian Pasqua
- Lower Rhine German Paisken
- Norwegian Påske
- Romanian Paşti
- Russian Пасха (Paskha)
- Scottish Pask
- Spanish Pascua
- Swedish Påsk
- Bulgarian Великден (Velikden) (literally: the Grand Day)
- Polish Wielkanoc (literally: the Grand Night)
When is Easter?
See also Computus.
West (Roman Catholic and Protestant)
- 2000 April 23
- 2001 April 15
- 2002 March 31
- 2003 April 20
- 2004 April 11
- 2005 March 27
- 2006 April 16
- 2007 April 8
- 2008 March 23
- 2009 April 12
- 2010 April 4
- 2011 April 24
- 2000 April 30
- 2001 April 15
- 2002 May 5
- 2003 April 27
- 2004 April 11
- 2005 May 1
- 2006 April 23
- 2007 April 8
- 2008 April 27
- 2009 April 19
- 2010 April 4
- 2011 April 24
External links