4/5/23

It’s here! The most important week of the Christian Year! 

It’s an important week  . . . and it’s also a very full week. For church musicians and pastors, Holy Week can be a challenge. It’s as busy as the Advent/Christmas season, except it’s all packed into one week! But it’s an important week (the most important week – did I mention that?), so we do what we do, we plan, we prepare because we recognize the value of it all. And it’s only once a year, and it’s the most important week of the year (there, that makes 3 times. If something happens twice, it can look like an accident. If it happens three times, then it’s a motif!), so don’t miss out! 

The high point of the week (some call it the “summit of the Christian year”) is the “Easter Triduum,” or the 3 days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. These 3 days lead up to the greatest day of the year, Easter Sunday. The services on these 3 days help us relive the passion, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus, and they help us understand our own journey of faith as Christians, and to ponder the events leading to our redemption.

And, like Christmas, Easter has its share of traditions that have grown up apart from the church services. Easter baskets, Easter eggs, bunny rabbits . . . it’s easy to understand little Johnny’s confusion when his Sunday School teacher asked the class, “Who brings us Easter eggs every Spring?” Little Johnny said, “It sounds like the Easter bunny . . . but I think the answer’s supposed to be . . .  Jesus?” 

Like so many of our beloved Christmas traditions, people are quick to attribute Easter traditions and even the name of the holiday itself, “Easter,” to pagan practices. For example, there’s a lot of nonsense on social media now about Easter coming from the Babylonian goddess Ishtar. There’s not a shred of evidence to back it up.

Easter is not pagan in the least! If anything, Easter is a Christian fulfillment and transformation of the Jewish Passover celebration. Most non-English speaking countries refer to the celebration of Christ’s resurrection by some version of the Hebrew word pesach, or Passover, for example, Pascua in Spanish; les Paques in French; Pascha in Greek;  and Pasqua in Italian.  

Then why do we call it “Easter”? When Germanic people came into Christianity, they brought their language with them. The celebration of Christ’s resurrection occurred in their month of Eostre (which became Easter), which was named after a Spring goddess from their pagan past. We only know that because an 8th century English monk, the Venerable Bede, wrote that the name, Easter, comes from the name Eostre-monath - that is, Easter month. That’s as close a connection there is to anything pagan! 

Any assertion that any of our Easter traditions came from the pagan celebration of this Spring goddess are 100% fabricated, because although we know nothing about the worship of Eostre, we do know where our Easter traditions came from. 

Colored eggs and bunnies are uniquely Christian innovations by medieval Europeans. Eating an egg was the traditional way to break the fast at the end of Lent. One of the main things people fasted from was meat, and eggs were the form of meat most available to everyone. The wealthier Christians would give them as gifts, painting them red for Jesus’ blood, yellow for joy and green for rebirth and resurrection. 

Now, this one sounds like a stretch . . . and I won’t blame you if you need to Google it for yourself. Rabbits were associated with the Virgin Mary because the European brown-hare could give birth to a litter and then they could turn around and give birth to a second litter far sooner than they should have been able to! They became a symbol of virgin birth because they can conceive a second litter while still pregnant with the first - which, to pre-scientific people, who didn’t understand the mechanics, looked like a miracle.

And if you look at medieval artwork, you frequently see paintings of Mary surrounded by rabbits or even holding a hare, as in the famous painting by Titian (1506-1576);               

It amazes me how recklessly and ridiculously people dismiss or impugn Christian traditions. And it doesn’t take much digging at all to uncover the truth! 

I hope you all will join us this week as we take this journey, a journey that will take us from the Creation of the world all the way to the empty tomb! 

Blessings,
Pastor Terry