Easter

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The Cross, symbol of the Christian Church

You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. (Mark 16:5)
RESURREXIT SICUT DIXIT. ALLELUIA!

Easter is the most significant event of the Christian calendar. It is a period of intense sorrow for Christians, brought about by the death of Christ on the cross (Good Friday), but also of great spiritual happiness through the miracle of the resurrection (Easter Sunday).

When is Easter observed?

The date on which Easter falls varies from year to year, but Easter Sunday is always the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox - for the western church. The vernal equinox signals the beginning of Spring (in the Northern hemisphere).

Richard Thompson at the IPS Radio and Space Services website in Sydney explains it this way:

To obtain consistency in the date of Easter, the Church at the Council of Nicea (325AD) decided to define Easter with respect to an imaginary moon - known as the 'ecclesiastic moon'. Also, the date of the equinox was fixed at March 21 even though it can still vary slightly from this date. With this definition, the date of Easter can be determined in advance without further astronomical knowledge. But the sequence of dates varies significantly from year-to-year with Easter Sunday being as early as March 22 and as late as April 25. In fact, the exact sequence of Easter dates repeats itself approximately every 5,700,000 years in our Gregorian calendar.

The Eastern Orthodox churches decided not to follow the above definition and they determine Easter in another manner, sometimes leading to a difference in the date of Easter between churches.

Palm Sunday

Easter follows the month of Lent, when some Christians fast. As Lent ends, Holy Week begins with Palm (or Passion) Sunday. It is on Palm Sunday that Jesus arrived in Jerusalem on a donkey and the people of the city laid palm fronds on the road, and joyfully cried out to him, 'Hosanna; Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord' (Mark 11:9).

Maundy Thursday

On the Thursday, known as Maundy or Holy Thursday, Jesus was arrested and on Friday he was crucified at the place of the Skull, Golgotha.

On Easter Sunday, Jesus rose from the dead and walked amongst his disciples.

Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen. And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. (Mark 16, 14)

Around 70 percent of Australians declared themselves Christians in the 1996 census. But even those Australians who are of different religion, or not observers, cannot fail to experience some element of Australia's Easter celebrations.

Our Easter rituals

Easter eggs delivered by the Easter Bunny are an ubiquitous part of Easter. Supermarkets and department stores start stocking Easter chocolate almost as soon as Christmas and New Year celebrations are over, and children everywhere love an Easter egg hunt.

You may wonder what connection Easter eggs have to Christ's crucifixion and resurrection. Simply put, the egg symbolises new life and the rebirth of man through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Easter, the Christian festival, did not begin until some 300 years after the death and resurrection of Christ and overlaid pre-existing festivals celebrating the beginning of Spring. Some even argue that Easter is still a pagan festival and should not be celebrated by Christians.

Eostre: Goddess of Spring

The Easter rituals have distinct histories. One explanation for Easter is the story of Christ. Another has its origin in celebrations which took place around the vernal equinox - that is when (in the Northern hemisphere) days begin to get longer; the beginning of Spring. These celebrations were based around Eostre, the Anglo-Saxon Goddess of Spring and fertility, or Eostare, the Norse pagan festival of Spring.

Rites of Spring and celebrations to do with rebirth and renewal were common all through the Northern hemisphere and the Christian story of Christ's death and resurrection fitted in with this.

The egg

The egg is a symbol of birth and life. The ancient Persians and Greeks gave eggs at Spring festivals to indicate that nature was beginning to bloom again after the harshness of the winter. The colouring of eggs also began in pagan times.

Some of the world's most famous eggs are the Faberge eggs, which are decorated with gold leaf, precious jewels, satins and brocades. The first Faberge egg was produced as a gift for a member of the Russian royal family.

The rabbit versus endangered bilby

Bilbies NOT bunnies courtesy of The Australian Bilby Appreciation Society

For obvious reasons the rabbit was also a symbol of fertility and fecundity and became associated with festivals dedicated to celebrating the arrival of Spring. In Australia the rabbit is a pest, and celebrating it in any form denies the reality of Australia's rabbit plague and the damage rabbits do to Australia's fragile environment. The CSIRO estimates rabbit damage costs the Australian economy $AU600 million each year.

Because of this, a strong movement to replace the 'Easter Bunny' with one of Australia's own - the bilby - has developed. The bilby is a cute-looking creature with big eyes, big ears and a long tail and is a member of the bandicoot family.

The push for an Easter bilby was begun in 1991 by the Anti-Rabbit Research Foundation of Australia when they registered 'Easter bilby' as a business name and began licensing the use of that name for bilby-related products. The sale of the products was to fund research into wildlife conservation - an issue of importance to the bilby as bilbies are endangered, largely because of competition from rabbits and loss of habitat.

So instead of an Easter bunny delivering Easter eggs, they are now often delivered by a bilby, and Australian shops stock chocolate bilbies alongside chocolate eggs and rabbits.

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