Easter, also known as Resurrection Day celebrating the resurrection of Jesus, is the most important religious feast of the Christian liturgical year.
In the Roman Catholic Church, Easter is an eight-day feast called the Octave of Easter.
First Easter
The first Easter occured on March 25 in the year 31 A.D., according to early Christian chronographer Sextus Julius Africanus, who also placed the Incarnation of Christ on March 25 and the birth of Jesus exactly nine months later, or December 25.
Easter Sunday
Easter is observed on a Sunday between late March and late April, generally occurring on the Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox.
The formula for Easter Sunday was set at the Council of Nicaea in 325.
Since Passover falls on full moon (14 Nissan of the Jewish calendar) many Christians in the early church celebrated Christ's resurrection on that day – which could be any day of the week.
At Nicaea, there was agreement Easter Day needed to be always a Sunday. It was decided that Easter Day would be celebrated on the first Sunday following the first ecclesiastical full moon (this is a calculated lunar cycle – sometimes not exactly equivalent to the astronomical reality) that occurs on or after March 21 (the day of the ecclesiastical vernal equinox).
Easter Sunday can fall as early as March 22 or at the latest on April 25.
Eastern Orthodox Easter
Orthodox Catholics usually celebrate Easter almost a month after Roman Catholics. There are approximately 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide.
In Romania, where 85 percent of the population is Orthodox Christian, the resurrection of Christ is celebrated on the evening before Easter Sunday with a holy flame originating in Jerusalem that is passed between churches. Worshippers visit their local church with candles and take the flame - which is seen as a light from God - back into their homes for Easter Sunday.
Lost Paradise
The classic crucifixion image of Jesus in agony on a cross, so ingrained in Christian consciousness as to be its dominant archetype, is a rather new expression (probably less than a millenia old) created for political reasons during the Dark Ages. It has largely supplanted images of Christ's victory over death and a paradise on earth that filled the earliest Christian churches.
"It took Jesus a thousand years to die. Images of his corpse did not appear in churches until the tenth century," write Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker in their book Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire.
During a five-year survey of early Christian art in the Mediterranean and throughout Europe, the authors looked for the earliest depictions of Jesus and found plenty of images suggesting rescue from danger, baptism, paradise, and victory over death.
The earliest "dead" Jesus they found was in a side chapel of the Cologne Cathedral in northern Germany. The Gero Cross, a crucifix sculpted from oak, dates from around 960-970.
"In Christianity's second millenium the Crucifixion expelled paradise from earth. And Jesus died again."
In their book, the authors detail how life-affirming forms of Christianity succumbed to a focus on redemptive violence during the second millenium, infecting the faith like a virus.
"We recover here a life-giving, life-affirming Christianity, rooted in an ancient Mesopotamian past, that has survived despite many attempts to repress or destroy it and despite theological shifts that have betrayed it. We offer our study of this world as paradise as a way to retrieve a faith that affirms the many ways that people love one another, themselves, and the earth."
Easter Egg Roll
A tradition that dates back to at least 1878, the White House Easter Egg Roll is held on the White House lawn each Easter Monday for children and their parents.
The Egg Roll is a race for children pushing eggs across the lawn with a long-handled spoon. The event has included live music, sports courts, cooking stations, and storytelling.
Easter Lily
One of the traditional signs of Easter is the Easter lily with its large white flowers and its sweet aroma that fills the room.
The Easter lily is native to southern Japan. Prior to World War II, the bulbs were imported from there.
Today more than 95 percent of all Easter lily bulbs are produced on just 10 farms along the Pacific coast in a half-mile wide and 12-mile-long strip of land on the California and Oregon border.
Easter Bunnies, Eggs and Ham
What is it with Easter Bunnies, anyway? Eggs and ham suggest breakfast, not a religious holiday. And what's with the decorated egg shells?
These symbols are everywhere this time of year, but what do they have to do with the Christian celebration of the Resurrection? Do white rabbits have some spiritual significance? Are colored eggs Christian? And why eat ham on a day celebrating Jesus, a lifelong Jew who never touched the meat?
Continued in Out of the Past