An Easter Christians around the world celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead – Easter is therefore a celebration of joy, a celebration of new beginnings and life. Easter is considered the highest of the church festivals.
When is actually Easter?
The Council of Nicaea set Easter as the first Sunday after the first full moon in spring. That was in the year 325 AD. Since then, Easter has been observed in the western churches between March 22nd and April 25th.
Here are the dates for 2023
Why is Easter called Easter?
You don’t know that exactly anymore. There are several ways the name could have come about.
- The name of the festival may refer to the Old English goddess of spring: Eastern.
- Or Easter comes from “Ostara”, the Germanic goddess of fertility. The rabbit belongs to her as a sacred animal.
- Easter derives from the Middle High German “Urständ”, which means something like “resurrection”.
- However, the name could also be the result of a translation error: After that, the Latin name of Easter week (hebdo-mada in albis, dt. White week) was mistakenly associated with the dawn (“albis” as the plural of “Alba”). And this bears the Old High German name eostaran.
Beginning of Easter: Passiontide
“Passion” describes the passion of Jesus. Lent has 40 days and begins on Ash Wednesday and ends with Easter Sunday – Passiontide is also called Lent.
After Easter there are another forty days until Ascension Day and fifty until Pentecost. These days are also variable in the calendar.
What happens during Holy Week and Good Friday?
With the Maundy Thursday (also “Holy Thursday” or “Palm Thursday”), i.e. the Thursday before Good Friday, starts the Holy Week. The suffering and death of Jesus is remembered. On this day, according to the New Testament, Jesus had a farewell dinner with his twelve disciples. He was then betrayed and arrested by Judas.
The Good Friday (from the Old High German “Kar” for mourning, lamentation, penance) is a day of penitence for Catholics, for Protestant Christians the day is together with the Easter holidays the highest holiday of the year.
The historical significance:
At night, Jesus’ suffering is commemorated: the arrest, the torture. Jesus was whipped, he was given the crown of thorns. The death sentence came early in the morning from the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. At nine o’clock Jesus was nailed to the cross, six hours later he died and was laid in a rock tomb.
This is how the day goes today:
Good Friday is a “silent holiday”. All sports and dance events are prohibited. Bells and church organ are silent. It is fasted. Many families deliberately do without meat – there is fish.
Believers (and also the Pope in Rome) pray the Way of the Cross with its 14 stations. In the afternoon there is often a “commemoration of the passion and death of Christ”; the believers kneel individually before the cross.
During the Good Friday procession, the cross of Jesus is carried and honored by the faithful on the Way of the Cross
What do the Easter holidays mean?
Am holy saturday According to biblical tradition, a group of Roman soldiers guarded the tomb of Jesus. According to the Gospel of Nicodemus, Jesus descends into the underworld, has angels bind Satan, leads Adam and “all the righteous” to paradise.
How is it celebrated?
In the churches there is only a service in the evening, at the start of the Easter Vigil: the Easter Mass. Bells and organ sound again. One celebrates the idea of redemption from all sins through the death of Jesus.
There are also many old Christian and folk customs on Easter Saturday:
- This is how many people traditionally make one housecleaning – “Judas (the betrayer of Jesus) is swept out”. The house is adorned with fresh greenery. Eggs are painted and the feasts are prepared.
- Feld- and gardening are forbidden: let the earth on which Jesus lies rest.
- Easter fire are now much more than a Christian tradition. People meet on the riverbank, on the beach or at the village fire brigade and celebrate Easter at a big fire – without any church background. These fires have more of a pagan origin: they were supposed to banish the winter from the Germans.
Easter Sunday and Easter Monday are happy holidays. They are mostly all about family.
Early in the morning the children look for the Easter nests with sweets and little ones hidden by the “Easter Bunny” inside or outside gifts. People meet for the traditional Easter breakfast with Easter braid and egg dishes, for brunch or for a festive roast lamb.
On Easter Monday, people take the traditional Easter walk. Roman Catholics go to Holy Mass again on Easter Monday.