Saints and Sinners: Easter’s colorful history, deep meaning
If you think it will do any good, you ladies may want to explain to your husbands that there is nothing frivolous about buying a new Easter outfit. Remind him that it has a long-standing religious significance.
If that doesn’t work, remind him that it was once believed that a curse would fall upon anybody too stingy to shell out for a new Easter outfit.
The practice of getting new finery for Easter dates back centuries. In his “Easter Book,” (Firefly Press, 1999) the Rev. Francis X. Weiser, professor of philosophy at Boston College, said, “As newly baptized Christians wore white garments of new linen, so it became a tradition among all the faithful to appear in new clothes on Easter Sunday, symbolizing ‘new life’ that the Lord, through his resurrection, bestowed upon all believers.”
“This custom,” according to Weiser, “was widespread during medieval times. In many places, a popular superstition threatened with ill luck all those who could afford to buy new clothes for Easter Sunday but refused to do so.”
The origins of many of our Easter customs are lost to history. While the symbol of the lamb is easy to identify (Christ is the “Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world”), what about Easter eggs? And the Easter bunny? And how did ham become the traditional Easter dish?
Weiser traces the Easter egg to the Indo-European races. To these people, he said, it was a most startling event to see a living creature emerge from a seemingly dead object. In Christian times, the egg became a symbol of the rock tomb out of which Christ emerged to the new life of his resurrection.
For ages, Easter eggs were painted in vibrant colors and given as gifts to friends, especially children.
The annual egg-rolling party on the White House lawn is related to the sport of “egg-pecking,” which is practiced in Syria, Iraq and Iran and throughout Europe. In Germany, Austria and France, hard-boiled eggs are rolled against each other on a lawn or down a hill. The egg that remains uncracked to the end is called the “victory egg.”
As for the Easter bunny, its origin lies in pre-Christian fertility lore.
Hares and rabbits were the most fertile animals our forefathers knew, Weiser explains, “and they served as symbols of abundant new life in the spring.”
The pig’s religious associations with Easter are slight, although Weiser says “it is an age-old custom, handed down from pre-Christian times, to eat the flesh of this animal on festive occasions.”
Why?
Weiser says it is because the pig “has always been a symbol of good luck and prosperity among Indo-Europeans. In some German popular expressions, the word ‘pig’ is synonymous with good luck (Schwein haben). In Hungary, the highest card (ace) in card games is called ‘pig’ (diszno). Savings boxes for children in the figure of a pig (piggy banks) carry out the ancient symbolism of good luck and prosperity.”
Easter, with its proof and promise of immortality, is the Christian’s “good luck.”
Indeed, Easter may mean many things to us, but surely it signifies that if we never lose sight of our highest dreams and pursue them resolutely — in good times and bad, through thick and thin, even in the absence of any encouraging signs — we will see these dreams, though they may appear to be dead, come to glorious life!
(George Plagenz is a syndicated columnist.)