Some Thoughts on the Easter Celebration

It's always struck me as odd that Easter, as a holiday experienced by human beings, was so much less a cultural event than Christmas. It is liturgically the much more important feast, indeed the greatest feast of the year; but whereas our whole culture bends itself towards Christmas for a month every year (even in this more secular age), Easter has never been as big an event.

At Christmas we have grand feasts -- meat pies, every kind of cake and pastry, and as the song says, 'Hail to Christmas/ once a year/ when we may drink/ both ale and beer.' At Easter there is usually just a ham and some candies. At Christmas there is a huge festival of gift-giving; at Easter, children (only) get an Easter basket filled with fake grass and fake eggs, with more little candies or trinkets. At Christmas we sing Christmas Carols at Mass, and pageants involve the children merrily as shepherds or angels; at Easter, the services are interminable and children are forced to endure uncomfortable and unpleasant Easter costumes they will never wear a second time, but which they are nevertheless enjoined from playing in because they might get grass stains on the pure-white outfits. 

For a long time I thought it was just a kind of accident, or perhaps a pagan inheritance; we could have given gifts at Easter instead of Christmas, but the old pagan holiday of the Winter Solstice was the big gift-giving holiday, and that transferred. Christianity was hampered in its choice to celebrate the spring instead of the winter because the existing cultural assumptions were too hard to transform. 

I have come to realize, though, that the facts of the world inform this more than human culture. Christmas (or whatever Winter feast) comes right after the slaughter and harvest, when fresh meats and other good things are far more widely available. October was the season for the brewing of the best ale of the year, as we know from Robin Hood stories; those were readily on hand for the holiday. Also, the coming of the snows and the cold weather meant that there was less to do outside, so there was time on hand to commit to a big celebration.

This time of year we are still a long way from First Fruits. The winter stores are drained, and what remains needed to be stretched out -- summer was often the hungry time in the old days. A ham, cured last year, was the last festival item available; the alternative was to slaughter an Easter lamb, newborn just this year, to enjoy fresh meat. But that was quite a sacrifice, as you would be giving up the meat from the larger animal that would come later, as well as its wool. A poorer community, or those coming off a bad year (like last year!) could hardly afford it. 

Thus on Easter we dress in fresh clothes, eat more sparingly of lesser foods, and give smaller gifts. But it is in the Springtime that the hope of new life comes, warmth returns to the world, and green begins to spring anew. The time of year better fits the Gospel story, dramatically; and it is perhaps for this reason that the divine decision was made to orient the liturgical year to the physical one in this way.

Except that only works for the Northern hemisphere, and Jesus lived near the equator. I've never been to the Southern hemisphere. Is Easter there more like our Thanksgiving in how it is celebrated? I don't know.