The Importance of Easter

Easter is the most sacred and joyful of Christian holidays. Today’s mainstream cultural leaders refuse to acknowledge its importance to students and, sadly, it is often not taught at public schools.  However, homeschoolers have the opportunity to channel into this rich and exciting holiday. It is possible for homeschoolers to learn more about Easter by studying the symbols of the festive season, such as the lamb, egg, rabbit, and to see the religious reasons we happily hide colorful Easter eggs and eat luscious chocolate bunnies and to discover where these traditions came from.

We celebrate Easter on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the Vernal Equinox, the first day of Spring, when there are equal periods of light and darkness, and which is traditionally, but not always, on March 21^st.  Hence, Easter can be any Sunday between March 22nd and April 25th.

Jesus Christ’s crucifixion took place on the day we now call Good Friday.  That is, He was hung on the cross until He was dead. As would be expected, His friends and family on that day buried Him, but because it was Friday, the holy day of the Jews, they did not dress him then.  They planned to do so a few days later, on the first day of the week.  But Jesus rose from the grave so that when Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the grave to anoint Him on the planned day they found an empty tomb. 

Angels at the tomb “in clothes that gleamed like lightning” told them Jesus was not there as had been prophesized. He had risen just as He promised he would. Easter is the celebration of Jesus’ rising from the dead.  It shows that Jesus and God have power even over death. Christians, therefore, know that because of Christ’s resurrection they have the hope of everlasting life in Heaven after their earthly death, and this gives them great confidence to live a good life on earth.  Proof of the Easter story is that Jesus’ followers told us how after the crucifixion they saw Him alive, talked to Him, and even touched the scars in his hands. Young readers can learn about this resurrection by accounts told in each of the Gospels.  It is this story that began the Christian religion.

Certainly Easter is a Christian festival, but there are some non-Christian, pagan, traditions which have blended with the Christian. As told by the English cleric Bede, called Venerable Bede, the name Easter probably comes from the Anglo-Saxon month of Eosturmonath, named for Eostre, the goddess of fertility and spring. It is easy to see how such a pagan renewal festivity could be mingled with celebrations of the rebirth of Christ. 

Joyful traditions associated with the rebirth holiday endure: there is the rabbit (a symbol of fertility), who delivers eggs to good children and, since medieval times, these are happily colored Easter eggs (demonstrating the brighter and stronger sun occurring in spring).  This gaiety is echoed in other Easter-egg related events such as hiding colorful eggs and laughter-filled egg rolls.  Most of these merry times even involve eating a delicious chocolate rabbit, all traditions too delightful to fade.

Importantly, there is another event celebrated in the spring which is closely related to Easter.  Since Jesus was Jewish — as were many of the early Christians — scholars have long regarded Easter as closely linked to the Passover (or Pesach in Hebrew) festival. Passover commemorates the Jews’ passage out of slavery in Egypt into freedom in the Promised Land.  The Passover ceremony includes eating lamb.