Easter

Easter Triduum

2008-10-01T01:27:11-06:00

Easter Triduum (or Paschal Triduum) is a term used by some Christian churches, particularly the Roman Catholic Church, to denote, collectively, the last three days before Easter Sunday.

The term was first used for this purpose at the Second Vatican Council, whose revised liturgical calendar set the final three days of Holy Week apart from Lent proper. Among other things, the change meant that purple vestments would henceforth no longer be used on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday, with the color being changed to white on Holy Thursday and Holy Saturday and to red on Good Friday in commemoration of the crucifixion (the color for Palm Sunday was concomitantly changed from purple to red). In addition, no elective Masses (such as weddings or funerals) could be solemnized on these three days (prior to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council weddings were prohibited throughout the entire season of Lent and certain other periods as well).

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Video: Lord Divine Mercy Easter Triduum (Easter Vigil Holy Mass)

Easter Monday

2008-09-11T02:53:08-06:00

Easter Monday is a Christian holiday celebrated the next day after Easter Sunday. Formerly, 'it was also celebrated as a week' , but it was reduced to a one day celebration in the 19th century. Celebration events include egg rolling competitions and dousing other people with water which, at one time, was holy water used to bless the house and food.

Official holiday

Easter Monday is an official holiday in the following countries:

Albania Andorra Anguilla Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Aruba Australia Austria Bahamas Barbados Belarus (Julian Calendar) Belgium Belize Benin Botswana British Virgin Islands Bulgaria (Julian Calendar) Burkina Faso Cameroon Canada (general holiday in Québec, loosely observed elsewhere) Cape Verde Islands Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile Cook Islands Côte d'Ivoire Croatia Czech Republic (Pomlázka) Denmark Dominica Equatorial Guinea Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana Gabon Gambia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guatemala Guinea Guyana Hong Kong Hungary Iceland Ireland Isle of Man Italy Jamaica Kenya Kiribati Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Malawi Martinique Moldova (Julian Calendar) Monaco Montserrat Namibia Nauru Netherlands Netherlands Antilles New Caledonia New Zealand Niger Nigeria Niue Norway Papua New Guinea Poland Romania (Julian Calendar) Rwanda Senegal Serbia and Montenegro (Julian Calendar) Seychelles Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands South Africa (Family Day)[1] Spain Sweden Switzerland St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Suriname Swaziland Switzerland Tanzania Trinidad and Tobago Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda Ukraine United Kingdom(except Scotland) U.S. Virgin Islands Vanuatu Western Samoa Zambia Zimbabwe

Easter Monday is also celebrated in the one U.S. state of North Carolina.

Traditions

Dyngus Day or Wet Monday (Polish Śmigus-dyngus, lany poniedziałek or Oblewania) is the name for Easter Monday in Poland. In the Czech Republic it is called Velikonocni Pondeli or Pomlázka, as the whip-type being used.

Both countries practice a peculiar custom on this day. Traditionally, boys will awaken girls early in the morning and douse them with water and strike them about the legs with long thin twigs made from willow, birch or decorated tree branches (palmy wielkanocne). This practice is possibly connected to a pre-Christian, pagan fertility rite, that seems in line with the Ancient Roman Lupercalia, although the earliest documented records of Dyngus Day in Poland are from 15th century, almost half a millennium after Poland adopted Christianity.

Early in the Polish evolution of the tradition, the Dyngus custom was clearly differentiated from Śmigus: Dyngus was the exchange of gifts (usually eggs, often decorated like pisankas), under the threat of water splashing if one party did not have any eggs ready, while Śmigus (from Śmigać, to whoosh, ie make a whipping noise) referred to the striking.

Later the focus shifted to the courting aspect of the ritual, and young unmarried girls were the only acceptable targets. A boy would sneak into the bedroom of the particular girl he fancied and awaken her by completely drenching her with multiple buckets of water. Politics played an important role in proceedings, and often the boy would get access to the house only by arrangement with the girl's mother.

Throughout the day girls would find themselves the victims of drenchings and leg-whippings, and a daughter who wasn't targeted for such activities was generally considered to be beznadziejna (hopeless) in this very coupling-oriented environment.

Most recently, the tradition has changed to become entirely water-focused, and the Śmigus part is almost forgotten. It is quite common for girls to attack boys just as fiercely as the boys traditionally attacked the girls. With much of Poland's population residing in tall apartment buildings, high balconies are favourite hiding places for young people who gleefully empty entire buckets of water onto randomly selected passers-by.

In the Czech Republic, instead of splashing water, a special handmade whip called pomlázka is used on females in the morning. In the afternoon, females douse males with cold water.

In the United States, Dyngus Day celebrations are widespread and popular in Buffalo, New York and South Bend, Indiana. In Buffalo's eastern suburbs, Dyngus Day is celebrated with a level of enthusiasm that rivals St. Patrick's Day. In South Bend, the day is often used to launch the year's political campaign - often from within a local pub, where buying drinks is favored over handshaking.

For Easter Monday in Hungary, perfume or perfumed-water is used. The girls would reward the boys who sprinkle with coins or Easter eggs.

References

(1994-12-07). Public Holidays Act, 1994 (36 of 1994, South Africa). (PDF) URL accessed on 2006-04-05.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Easter - e-book and free content

2008-08-28T14:15:28-06:00

Easter is the most important religious holiday of the Christian liturgical year, observed in March, April, or May to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, which Christians believe occurred after his death by crucifixion in AD 27-33.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts.

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Religious observation of Easter

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Western Christianity

The Easter festival is kept in many different ways among Western Christians. The traditional, liturgical observation of Easter, as practised among Roman Catholics and some Lutherans and Anglicans begins on the night of Holy Saturday with the Easter Vigil. This, the most important liturgy of the year, begins in total darkness with the blessing of the Easter fire, the lighting of the large Paschal candle (symbolic of the Risen Christ) and the chanting of the Exsultet or Easter Proclamation attributed to Saint Ambrose of Milan. After this service of light, a number of readings from the Old Testament are read; these tell the stories of creation, the sacrifice of Isaac, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the foretold coming of the Messiah. This part of the service climaxes with the singing of the Alleluia and the proclamation of the gospel of the resurrection. A sermon may be preached after the gospel. Then the focus moves from the lectern to the font. Anciently, Easter was considered the most perfect time to receive baptism, and this practice is alive in Roman Catholicism, as it is the time when new members are initiated into the Church, and it is being revived in some other circles. Whether there are baptisms at this point or not, it is traditional for the congregation to renew the vows of their baptismal faith. This act is often sealed by the sprinkling of the congregation with holy water from the font. The Catholic sacrament of Confirmation is also celebrated at the Vigil. The Easter Vigil concludes with the celebration of the Eucharist and Holy Communion. Additional celebrations are usually offered on Easter Sunday itself. Some churches prefer to keep this vigil very early on the Sunday morning instead of the Saturday night to reflect the gospel account of the women coming to the tomb at dawn on the first day of the week. Some churches read the Old Testament lessons before the procession of the Paschal candle, and then read the gospel immediately after the Exsultet.

In predominantly Roman Catholic Philippines, the morning of Easter (known in the national language as "Pasko ng Muling Pagkabuhay" or the Pasch of the Resurrection) is marked with joyous celebration, the first being the dawn "Salubong", wherein large statues of Jesus and Mary are brought together to meet, imagining the first reunion of Jesus and his mother Mary after Jesus' Resurrection. This is followed by the joyous Easter Mass.

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 Resurrection 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. Eastern Rite Catholics in communion with the Pope of Rome have similar emphasis in their calendars, and many of their liturgical customs are very similar.

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 Resurrection, in which all that has come before reaches fulfilment and fruition. Pascha (Easter) is the primary act that fulfils 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 Paschal Troparion, sung repeatedly during Pascha until the Apodosis of Pascha (which is the day before Ascension):

English	Greek	Church Slavonic*
Christ is risen from the dead, Trampling down death by death, And upon those in the tombs Bestowing life!	Χριστος ανέστη εκ νεκρον, θανάτο θάνατον πατήσας, και τους εν τους μνήμασι, ζωὴν χαρισάμενος!	Хрїсто́съ воскре́се и́зъ ме́ртвыхъ, Сме́ртїю сме́рть попра́въ, И сѹ́щымъ во гробѣ́хъ живо́тъ Дарова́въ!
Transliterations	Christos anesti ek nekron, Thanato thanaton patisas, Kai tis en tis mnimasi Zo-in charisamenos!	Christos voskrese iz mertvich, Smertiu smert poprav, I soushchim vo grobyech Zhivot darovav!

*This language is not well-supported on many systems, so it may not appear as intended here.

Celebration of the holiday begins with the "anti-celebration" of Great Lent. In addition to fasting, almsgiving, and prayer, Orthodox are supposed to reduce all entertainment and non-essential activity, gradually eliminating them until Holy Friday. Traditionally, on the evening of Holy Saturday, the Midnight Office is celebrated shortly after 11:00 pm. At its completion all light in the church building is extinguished. A new flame is struck in the altar, or the priest lights his candle from a perpetual lamp kept burning there, and he then lights candles held by deacons or other assistants, who then go to light candles held by the congregation. Entirely lit by candle, the priest and congregation process around the church building, re-entering ideally at the stroke of midnight, whereupon Matins begins immediately followed by the Paschal Hours and then the Divine Liturgy. Immediately after the Liturgy it is customary for the congregation to share a meal, essentially an agape dinner (albeit at 2.00 am or later!)

The day after, Easter Sunday proper, there is no liturgy, since the liturgy for that day has already been celebrated. Instead, in the afternoon, it is often traditional to hold "Agape vespers". In this service, it has become customary during the last few centuries 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!"

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Easter Traditions

2008-08-27T09:10:34-06:00

Easter Traditions

Easter controversies

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Anti-Easter Christians

Some Christian fundamentalists reject nearly all the customs surrounding Easter, believing them to be irrevocably tainted with paganism and idolatry. Others, like the Sabbatarian Church of God groups, claim to adhere to a more primitive form of Christianity, and keep a Christian Passover which lacks most of the practices or symbols associated with Easter and retains more features of the Jewish observance.

Possible pagan influences on Easter traditions

An Easter Bunny

In his 'De Temporum Ratione' the Venerable Bede wrote that the month Eostremonat was so named because of a goddess, Eostre, who had formerly been worshipped in that month. In recent years some scholars (Ronald Hutton, P.D. Chantepie de la Saussaye, Elizabeth Freeman) have suggested that a lack of supporting documentation for this goddess might indicate that Bede assumed her existence based on the name of the month. Others note that Bede's status as "the Father of English History", having been the author of the first substantial history of England ever written, might make the lack of additional mention for a goddess whose worship had already died out by Bede's time unsurprising. The debate receives considerable attention because the name 'Easter' is derived from Eostremonat, and thus, according to Bede, from the pagan goddess Eostre.

Jakob Grimm took up the question of Eostre in his Deutsche Mythologie of 1835, noting that Ostaramanoth was etymologically related to Eostremonat and writing of various landmarks and customs related to the goddess Ostara in Germany. Again, because of a lack of written documentation, critics suggest that Grimm took Bede's mention of a goddess Eostre at face value and constructed the goddess Ostara around existing Germanic customs which may have arisen independently. Others point to Grimm's stated intent to gather and record oral traditions which might otherwise be lost as explanation for the lack of further documentation. Amongst other traditions, Grimm connected the 'Osterhase' (Easter Bunny) and Easter Eggs to the goddess Ostara/Eostre. He also cites various place names in Germany as being evidence of Ostara, but critics contend that the close etymological relationship between Ostara and the words for 'east' and 'dawn' could mean that these place names referred to either of those two things rather than a goddess.

Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum ("Ecclesiastic History of the English People") contains a letter from Pope Gregory I to Saint Mellitus, who was then on his way to England to conduct missionary work among the heathen Anglo-Saxons. The Pope suggests that converting heathens is easier if they are allowed to retain the outward forms of their traditional pagan practices and traditions, while recasting those traditions spiritually towards Christianity instead of to their indigenous gods (whom the Pope refers to as "devils"), "to the end that, whilst some gratifications are outwardly permitted them, they may the more easily consent to the inward consolations of the grace of God". The Pope sanctioned such conversion tactics as biblically acceptable, pointing out that God did much the same thing with the ancient Israelites and their pagan sacrifices. This practice might explain the incorporation of Eostre traditions into the Christian holiday.

However, the giving of eggs at spring festivals was not restricted to Germanic peoples and could be found among the Persians, Romans, Jews and the Armenians. They were a widespread symbol of rebirth and resurrection and thus might have been adopted from any number of sources.

An anthropomorphized Easter Bunny may make public appearances for children.

Easter as a Sumerian festival

Some suggest an etymological relationship between Eostre and the Sumerian goddess Ishtar ([2] [3] [4] [5]) and the possibility that aspects of an ancient festival accompanied the name, claiming that the worship of Bel and Astarte was anciently introduced into Britain, and that the hot cross buns of Good Friday and dyed eggs of Easter Sunday figured in the Chaldean rites just as they do now.

At best, any connection between Ishtar and Easter is geographically and linguistically distant, and tangential.

According to the Venerable Bede, "Eostre" was the name of a Goddess for whom the fourth month - Eostremonath - was named (De temporum ratione, I, v). But nothing else is actually known about this Goddess. Linguistic analysis suggests that her name is related to the word for "dawn," so it is plausible that she might have been a goddess of the dawn. And Bede claims that the name "Easter" came from the name of the month, not directly from the Goddess herself.

Although there are claims that her cult is the original source for such Easter traditions as the Easter Bunny, there is no evidence for this.

Claiming a connection between Ishtar and Easter also ignores the fact that Easter is called "Passover" in almost every other language in the world. (The only exceptions appear to be the languages of those people who first learned Christianity at the hands of English or other Anglophone missionaries.) Examples of this are the Hebrew Pesach; the Greek Paskha; the Latin Pascha; the Spanish La Pascua; and Scots Gaelic An Casca. The holiday was not called "Easter" until the 8th Century, by which time it had already been in existence for 700 years.

There is the additional problem that the very lands where Ishtar was once known have never been known to use a name like "Easter" for this or any other spring holiday.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Easter position in the church year

2008-07-14T10:11:41-06:00

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.

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 commemorate Jesus' entry in Jerusalem, the Last Supper and the Crucifixion. Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday are sometimes referred to as the Easter Triduum (Latin for "Three Days"). In some countries, Easter lasts two days, with the second called "Easter Monday". The week beginning with Easter Sunday is called Easter Week or the Octave of Easter, and each day is prefaced with 'Easter', e.g. Easter Monday, Easter Tuesday, etc. Easter Saturday is therefore the Saturday after Easter Sunday. The day before Easter is properly called Holy Saturday. Many churches start celebrating Easter late in the evening of Holy Saturday at a service called the Easter Vigil.

Eastertide, 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 (Πάσχα), 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 Service consists of Paschal Matins, Hours, and Liturgy, which traditionally begins at midnight of Pascha morning. Placing the Paschal Divine Liturgy at midnight guarantees that no Divine Liturgy will come earlier in the morning, ensuring its place as the pre-eminent "Feast of Feasts" in the liturgical year.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Date of Easter

2008-06-29T13:33:28-06:00

**Dates for Easter Sunday, 2000-2020**
Year	Western	Eastern
2000	April 23	April 30
2001	April 15
2002	March 31	May 5
2003	April 20	April 27
2004	April 11
2005	March 27	May 1
2006	April 16	April 23
2007	April 8
2008	March 23	April 27
2009	April 12	April 19
2010	April 4
2011	April 24
2012	April 8	April 15
2013	March 31	May 5
2014	April 20
2015	April 5	April 12
2016	March 27	May 1
2017	April 16
2018	April 1	April 8
2019	April 21	April 28
2020	April 12	April 19

In Western Christianity, Easter always falls on a Sunday from March 22 to April 25 inclusive. The following day, Easter Monday, is a legal holiday in many countries with predominantly Christian traditions.

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 similar—but not identical—to the Hebrew Calendar. 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 Sunday throughout the Church, but it is probable that no method was specified by the Council. (No contemporary account of the Council's decisions has survived.) Instead, the matter seems to have been referred to the church of Alexandria, which city had the best reputation for scholarship at the time. The Catholic Epiphanius wrote in the mid-4th Century, "...the emperor...convened a council of 318 bishops...in the city of Nicea...They passed certain ecclesiastical canons at the council besides, and at the same time decreed in regard to the Passover that there must be one unanimous concord on the celebration of God's holy and supremely excellent day. For it was variously observed by people..."(Epiphanius. The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, Books II and III (Sects 47-80), De Fide). Section VI, Verses 1,1 and 1,3. Translated by Frank Williams. EJ Brill, New York, 1994, pp.471-472).

The practice of those following Rome was to celebrate Easter on the first Sunday after the earliest fourteenth day of a lunar month that occurred on or after March 21. During the Middle Ages this practice was more succinctly phrased as Easter is observed on the Sunday after the first full moon on or after the day of the vernal equinox. This full moon is called the Paschal full moon. The Church of Rome used its own methods to determine Easter until the 6th century, when it may have adopted the Alexandrian method as converted into the Julian calendar by Dionysius Exiguus (certain proof of this does not exist until the ninth century). Most churches in the British Isles used a late third century Roman method to determine Easter until they adopted the Alexandrian method at the Synod of Whitby in 664. Churches in western continental Europe used a late Roman method until the late 8th century during the reign of Charlemagne, when they finally adopted the Alexandrian method. Since western churches now use the Gregorian calendar to calculate the date and Eastern Orthodox churches use 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 eliminated the difference in date between the Eastern and Western churches. The reform was proposed for implementation starting in 2001, but it was not ultimately adopted by any member body.

A few clergymen of various denominations have advanced the notion of disregarding the moon altogether in determining the date of Easter; proposals include always observing the feast on the second Sunday in April, or always having seven Sundays between the Epiphany and Ash Wednesday, producing the same result except that in leap years Easter could fall on April 7. These suggestions have yet to attract significant support, and their adoption in the future is considered unlikely.

Computations

The calculations for the date of Easter are somewhat complicated. See computus for a discussion covering both the traditional tabular methods and more exclusively mathematical algorithms such as the one developed by 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 will, however, fall on March 23, just one day after its earliest possible date in 2008. Easter last fell on the latest possible date, April 25 in 1943, and will next fall on that date in 2038. However, it will fall on April 24, just one day before this latest possible date in 2011.

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, which is the day of preparation for Passover.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Easter

Easter Triduum

Easter Monday

Official holiday

Traditions

Links

References

Easter - e-book and free content

Religious observation of Easter

Western Christianity

Eastern Christianity

Easter Traditions

Easter controversies

Anti-Easter Christians

Possible pagan influences on Easter traditions

Easter as a Sumerian festival

Easter position in the church year

Western Christianity

Eastern Christianity

Date of Easter

Computations