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The Celebration of Spring March 27, 2005 The Reverend Roger Fritts Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church Bethesda, Maryland Each year in the spring we join with Christians around the world in celebrating Easter. It is a celebration of hope for the future, at the end of the dark and cold of winter. But we don’t just celebrate the spring by recalling the Christian story. In the spring people have expressed their hope for the future in many different ways. The oldest existing records about the word Easter are in a book written in the year 725 by a historian named Bede. This writer said that the word Easter and much of the symbolism associated with it in English-speaking countries come from Eostre, a Germanic goddess. He wrote that the word Easter comes from a festival held to celebrate Eostre in the spring. We do not know anything more about the Germanic goddess Eostre. In recent years people have invented stories and descriptions of this spring Goddess, but in truth we have only this one account written over twelve hundred years ago. Some believe the ancient German spring festival included a sunrise service and rabbits and eggs as symbols of hope for the future. Today in English speaking countries we continue these rituals. The earliest recorded spring celebration was in the city of Ur, in ancient Babylonia, now part of Iraq. At least 4,400 years ago Babylonians held a festival dedicated to the moon and the equinox. In Jewish history, about 2500 years ago the Babylonians deported thousands of Jews from Jerusalem to Babylonia. While there, the Jews learned about the idea of celebrating the spring equinox. Some scholars believe they brought this tradition back to Jerusalem and this is why Jews celebrate Passover in the springtime. Because the Last Supper was a Passover meal, early Christians celebrated Passover. In languages other than English and German the name of the holiday we call Easter comes from the Hebrew name of Passover. Over time this Christian Passover meal got caught up in church bureaucracy. In 325 the Council of Nicaea ruled that Christians should celebrate the resurrection of Jesus only on Sunday. For centuries there was debate among church leaders about which Sunday. In 532 a mathematician developed a method of calculating the date of Easter as the first Sunday after the full moon that followed the vernal equinox. Eastern Orthodox Christians use a different calender. So this year they will celebrate Easter on May 1. In America business leaders are bothered by the floating nature of the holiday. Some have sought to have Easter Sunday fall on the same day each year. in 1972 a business magazine took a poll on the question. Fifty-two percent of Americans favored having Easter always fall on the same Sunday late in April. One supporter of this idea said: “The practical arguments in favor of a fixed Sunday are impressive. The emotional arguments against it are not so impressive.” Another supporter said: “Not one person in a thousand knows how the date is set anyway.” Supporters argued that an early Easter is especially bad for retailers who use the season to trot out fashions for the warmer weather. On the other hand, 48% of those polled were critical of the idea of setting a yearly fixed date for Easter. One opponent wrote: “Moving George Washington’s birthday was one thing, moving Christ’s resurrection is another.” Hoping to unify Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant celebrations, ecumenical groups joined the business world’s push toward a fixed Easter in the late 1980s, but that effort also failed. One opponent wrote “I think commercialization of all holidays, religious or otherwise has gone far enough.” Unitarian Universalists follow the calendar of the western Christian churches. Our roots are in New England Puritanism. The early Puritans frowned on Easter celebrations. They were not opposed to feeling hope and joy and gladness in the spring, but they associated Easter celebrations back in England with the excessive drinking of hard liquor. The Puritans found little hope in heavy drinking. As a result, before the civil war, New England Unitarians seldom preached special Easter sermons. Easter celebrations were mostly held south of New England by Episcopalians, Roman Catholics and Lutherans. However, cultures change. After the Civil War, the flood of immigrants brought an increase in the popularity of Easter celebrations in the United States. I also suspect that after the tragic losses during the civil war, 19th century middle-class Americans found hope in domestic celebrations of spring. They lifted their spirits at Easter by decorating their churches and homes with Easter flowers and dressing in their Easter finery, especially the latest Easter bonnet. Hope in the future was symbolized by a new hat and fresh flowers. In a reminiscence about Easter Sundays while he was growing up in a small town in Virginia, Daniel Pickering, Jr. wrote “Easter was even more joyous than Christmas. Men stuck greenery onto their lapels and the women bloomed in bright bonnets. Some ordered hats not simply from Richmond but from Baltimore and Philadelphia. On Easter Sunday the congregation could not keep still as each new hat caused much neck training and comment.” He remembers, in particular, Miss Ida, a reserved woman known for her elaborate Easter bonnets, which she embellished herself with innumerable artificial flowers ordered from New York until “her head resembled a summer garden in full bloom.” One Easter when it looked as if Miss Ida was not going to make her usual appearance, the church’s celebration sagged, “Miss Ida’s absence had taken something bright from our lives, and as we sat down after singing Hail Thee, Festival Day, Easter seemed sadly ordinary.” But then Miss Ida appeared, with a still grander hat, the centerpiece of which was “a wonderful sunflower.”Our hearts leaped out,” Pickering recalled. At the end of the service people as far away as Richmond must have heard the congregation sing “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today.” Of course, this led to excess. Irving Berlin’s popular musical of 1948 called Easter Parade, opens with Fred Astaire singing and dancing his way along the streets of New York. He passes a dry goods store, then dances through a hat store, a flower store, and the toy shop. “Me, oh, my,” he sings, “there’s a lot to buy. There is shopping I must do. Happy Easter to you.” The only religious image in the film appears in the last scene when the Easter Parade has returned for another year. A Gothic church looms as a dim backdrop for the fancy dressed couples who stroll by in a streaming concourse of fashion and affluence. Some Protestant preachers had a problem with this. They would look out at congregations of bonneted, white gloved, matrons and their daughters and granddaughters and suggest that their priorities were misplaced. To make the point, in 1930 a Nazarene minister in Illinois preached his Easter sermon in overalls. And in 1956 a Methodist minister wore old clothes to conduct his Easter service. They said the hope that comes with spring and Easter had little to do with fancy clothing. Fashions changed again. Today many Protestants and Catholics come to church on Easter Sunday dressed casually. Many of you are now dressing the way clergy in the mid 20th century wanted you to dress. You have internalized the message of the 1950s: It is not how you look on the outside, it is what is inside you that is important. In recent years some Americans have replaced Easter bonnets with a new spring ritual we call spring break. College students who can afford to, travel to such places as Daytona Beach. I remember fondly my annual trips to the waterfalls at the bottom of the Grand Canyon each spring during college. Swimming with friends in the cold pools at the bottom of the water falls was my way of celebrating spring. Now when schools recess for spring break some families head off on vacation to places like Orlando. These trips are also expressions of hope, hope for a few days of pleasure, and at the same time hope that family relationships and friendships will strengthen and deepen. Not all these ritual spring trips are to sunny beaches or amusement parks. Some people find hope by connecting with ancient traditions. For example, in 1974 a Mexican journalist and amateur astronomer wrote and illustrated a book called The Pyramid of Kikulcan—Its Solar Symbolism. The book describes how each year at the spring equinox the alignment and shape of this one thousand-year-old Mayan Pyramid is such that the light of the sun creates triangles. These triangles look like a giant diamondback rattler with a feather on its head, descending the side of the pyramid. At the spring equinox in March 1975, a few hundred people came to the Yucatan Peninsula to watch the light form the shape of a diamond snake on the pyramid. Word spread. By March 1980 the crowd had grown to twelve thousand. In 1982 the Mexican president showed up to see the event. Twenty-five thousand people joined him. By 1984 the day became a national holiday in Mexico. Thirty thousand people gathered to see the light of the feathered snake. By 1987 attendance soared to thirty-five thousand. Each year now, on the day of the spring equinox, about 45,000 people gather at the thousand-year-old Mayan pyramid. They come from all over Mexico, and from the Americas, Europe and around the world. It is a new way to celebrate spring. In spring I join the pagan celebrations with colored eggs and sunrise services. At Passover I join in a ritual meal. I join in the Christian celebration of the life and teachings of Jesus. I support the ritual of Easter candy, by buying a chocolate bunny on the day after Easter, when they are half price. I seldom take a spring vacation, but I rejoice with those who are able to do so. And from the comfort of my home I enjoy the stories of those who travel to Mexico to watch the sun shine a diamond snake on a thousand year old pyramid. Today we can celebrate spring in ways that connect us with the pagans, the Babylonians, the Hebrews, the Christians, the Mayans and the 19th century bonnets wearers, and even all those folks on spring break. In our multi-cultural world, the stories and the rituals mingle together as we celebrate spring. Once again we bear witness that the sun has returned and that new growth, new life is appearing all around us. Once again we sing out in celebration of this day, of light and gladness. *** *** *** Sources: The Book of the Year by Anthony Aveni. Consumer Rites by Leigh Schmid |
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