Happy Belated Easter to you all!
I’m so sorry this is a day late, but in true Easter fashion, we spent the weekend with friends and family.
We went for a lovely Easter brunch on Saturday with a friend who is in India getting his Visa stamped before heading back to the US and then Sunday we had Easter Dinner with our best friend and neighbor.
Easter is a moveable feast, meaning it is not fixed to the civil calendar. So it’s sometimes really hard to guess when Easter is going to be but it generally variates between March 22nd and May 8th.
Easter is linked to the Jewish Passover by much of its symbolism, as well as by its place in the calendar. In many languages, the words for “Easter” and “Passover” are homonymous. Easter customs vary across the world, but attending sunrise services, exclaiming the Paschal greeting (which means greeting someone with “Christ is Risen” and them returning with “Truly, HE is Risen!”), clipping the church (which means that the congregation will hold hands and form a circle around the church to sing hymns, cheer or dance) and decorating Easter eggs, a symbol of the empty tomb, are common motifs. Additional customs include egg hunting, the Easter Bunny, and Easter parades, and are observed by both Christians and non-Christians and are usually viewed as renewal or rebirth.
So what is Easter?
Simply put, it’s the day that Jesus Christ came back from the dead.
But that’s not the whole story!
It all begins on Good Friday….
Christians believe that Jesus was killed on the cross about 2000 years ago by the Romans in a city called Jerusalem (most of Jerusalem is in the modern Country of Israel). The people who killed him did so because they believed that he was causing trouble for the government, and because he was claiming to be the Messiah. When they crucified him (meaning they nailed him to a cross), they even hung a sign over his head, which said, “King of the Jews.” The day he was crucified is known by Christians as Good Friday.
Christians believe that on the Sunday after Jesus was killed, some of his followers found that his body was no longer in the tomb where he was laid. Later, Jesus is said to have appeared to over 500 people and preached to them. The New Testament teaches that the resurrection of Jesus is what Christianity is based on. The resurrection made people believe that Jesus was the powerful Son of God. It is also spoken of as proof that God will judge the world fairly. Christians believe that God has given Christians “a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead”. Christians believe that through faith in God they are spiritually made alive with Jesus so that they may lead a new life.
Courtesy of Wikipedia (http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter)
What Easter means to me is Egg Hunts with my family and Chocolate Bunny’s with their ears bitten off (My Mom never once let us get to those ears first – it became a family tradition) and at my Grandparents house it meant Ham with fresh biscuits and gravy and coleslaw. Another basket full of marshmallows peeps and peanut butter filled chocolate eggs.
My Grandfather would hang packets of Juicy Fruit Gum and little plastic eggs filled with candy on the tree in front of their house. It was lovely to go out with him and get the gum and show him what candy was inside the brightly colored eggs. After he passed, my own parents carried on the tradition at our house.
To me, Easter means being with family, remembering the reason we are all here and beginning anew to do the right things and live the best life possible.
What’s Easter mean to you?
© 2012 Gori Rajkumari
Gori Rajkumari 