Easter is a Christian holyday/holiday. No other religion has a parallel to it. Christianity is not filled up without Easter – the Resurrection. Christmas became the answer to pagan rituals of the solstice, occurring in the northern hemisphere. The Sun was returning. The colder habited climes celebrated the event of coming warmer weather, fruits of the field, the animation of light in longer daytime, and the indications of ongoing life. Mankind would not flourish if all days were like December 21 in northern Europe, where solstice was a major celebration. The church may have countered pagan practices, like solstice parties, with accounts of birth stories of Jesus. Even marking Jesus’ birth sometimes held disrepute in the church. A person in early colonial America could be denied church membership if it were known that he or she kept Christmas observation. Some of the objection may have been partly from anti-Catholic reaction.
For large part, other holidays than Easter have factors in the mix of meanings and celebration. Thanksgiving, though deeply touched by a sense of formal and personal prayer, is really an American holiday, borne out of the convictions of the Pilgrims. It was partly adopted by colonial America, introduced as general culture by President George Washington, but not made officially annual until Abraham Lincoln. Hanukkah, of the Jews, is sacred to Jews, but is, like some holidays, reflective of the ideals of a particular culture. Martin Luther King Day is a similar cultural event, meant for all to accent freedom’s victory. If it were not set as a freedom emblem we would likely find a need for holidays for each racial identity. There were holidays representing Presidents. The birthdays of Washington and Lincoln both fall in February. As a lad, I knew we would not have school on those two days. The matter expanded with a rash of changes in honor titles on the death of President Kennedy. The issue was settled with a Presidents’ Day – for any one or all. The British honor the Monarch on a particular day accenting birthday, not the actual date of the monarch’s birth. So the story goes. In all the holidays there is, or was at the beginning of them, some positive spiritual concepts that either motivated the day or were important to it – a sense of sacredness. Even Halloween that has become something of a pagan observance, was once solemnized as the evening (Hallowed Evening) before the recognition of All Saints Day. We are alerted to tendencies about spiritual meanings, and the efforts to mute them, perhaps to lose them.
Even with the minor addition of the Easter bunny and colored eggs, it is not possible for alert persons to miss the Christian meaning for all people that Christian faith includes resurrection for those who identify with Jesus Christ, who said: Where I am there you shall be with me also. We know that many persons, perhaps most, do not believe it, or, if resurrection occurred, it was a onetime miracle in the creation occurrence when a person, verified as dead, came from the grave by something other than his own volition. Even theologians have tried to explain the event with recovery from swooning, or misreporting, or any option except a real death and a real resurrection. There is an underlying assumption that resurrection is impossible, which would mean that there is no God who could perform a miracle from death to life. The same person may believe quite firmly that somewhere in the time of the existence of the universe, life appeared from nothing. There is a sense in which, given the ground of this avenue of argument, life returned to that which was once alive, which seems easier to grasp than a faith that life came from nothing.
Jesus gave the information of his death and resurrection to disciples, who he knew would be distraught at his death. Even after clear teaching, they were distraught. When he revealed himself to them in resurrection, perhaps with a bit of humor and sublimity with doubting Thomas, they remembered his words. They had permitted those words to pass because they found the concept of resurrection too much to believe. They may have interpreted it as many persons interpret such references – that the spirit of the person conjured in the minds of loved ones looks down with empathy on our lives. The one in heaven smiles down, even prays for us, and is with us. Not likely. Resurrection is better. Much of what we believe about God with mankind seems to some like melodrama in syrupy interpretation. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020