It’s Easter! Happy Easter Everyone! An amazing celebration of Jesus resurrection which is a shadow of what waits for us. I love Easter. No presents, or so it has been for many of us. No decorations like Christmas. No dashing to the store for that last nothing! It is all about Jesus. We wish.
Where did the bunny and eggs come from? Did they come from the chocolate makers? After some search I find they both come from Germany between 1600 and 1800. The bunny is also considered the counter part of Santa. The rabbit has his origin, not in Christianity but with fertility and spring. In the quietness of the morning, I ask myself if secular society develops a celebration they can enjoy outside the resurrection. Maybe resurrection of spring life? I wonder. So, there, lay that one aside.
So, what is Easter to you? It may not be easy to set aside the celebration of excitement when children get up in the morning to search for eggs or find that brightly decorated basket. And who can forget bitting into that first chocolate bunny’s ear. After all, it is the only day you can have chocolate before / with breakfast.
Maybe it is a way for all of us as a society here in north America to think seriously about spring, especially after this weeks snow? Remember with me; summer starts with school getting out, fall begins with school going back, fall ends with Halloween and winter sets in hard at Christmas. So spring just naturally comes with daffodils and tulips and warm weather. The more senior among us will relate to spring and Easter and the song Irving Berlin wrote in 1933, “In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it, You'll be the grandest lady in the Easter parade”
To others of us, Easter is new clothing for the children? Do parents still buy Easter outfits for their children to wear to church? Or to school or wherever? Just asking. You see, we have all kinds of traditions that move us through our year. Celebrations that have meaning and connect to the whims and wishes of the people who make up our society. Starting with a good idea, they slowly become part of the transition. And that can be good. That is, as long as we don’t disconnect from the reason the tradition started in the beginning. Easter has so many wonderful things about it. And they all have their place and their significance where they touch our lives.
This Easter, do not separate this wonderful day from where it began. Easter begins with Jesus Christ. Easter is filled in the middle with all the activities of the day we all hold dear but just as the beginning, so Easter ends with Jesus Christ. It began at the entrance of a small cave cut in the rock face where once a body of man lay cold and breathless. It began with the stone rolled away and a burial cloth folded, no longer needed. It began with disciples running to find out for themselves. Bill Gaither said it better then I ever can:
Then came the morning, night turned into day:
The stone was rolled away, hope rose with the dawn!
Then came the morning,
Shadows vanished before the sun;
Death had lost and life had won,
For morning had come!
Easter began and ends with the realization that, HE IS RISEN! HE IS RISEN INDEED!!
Something to think about.
Rob