As we celebrate Easter, I thought it appropriate that we examine the holiday, its origins, and its traditions as they relate to Canada.
Many of you who follow the Christian faith may think you know everything there is to know about the event, but I am hopeful that I can perhaps reveal some additional facts. Let us begin with a few facts we all know.
The celebrations associated with our current Easter (also called Paschal) have their roots in the 2nd century AD when Easter became the most significant Christian festival of the year, celebrating Jesus Christ’s resurrection three days after His crucifixion. Easter follows Lent, a 40-day preparation period of penance, prayer and fasting or the giving up of vices.
Key days in the Easter season are Good Friday, a statutory holiday commemorating Christ’s crucifixion day, and Easter Sunday, resurrection day. Easter traditions include a candlelight vigil on Easter Sunday and a special church service called the Easter Eucharist.
One of the things that always fascinated me about Easter is that unlike most of our other holidays, Easter is a “movable feast” as it is held on a different date every year between March 22 and April 25, following the Paschal full moon on or after March 21.
In Western Christianity, using the Gregorian calendar, Easter always falls on a Sunday between 22 March and 25 April, occurring about seven days after the astronomical full moon.
Eastern Orthodox Christians base the Paschal date calculations on the Julian Calendar. There is a 13-day difference between the Gregorian and the Julian calendars. Thus, the 21st of March corresponds, during the 21st century, to the 3rd of April in the Gregorian Calendar. Since the Julian Calendar is no longer used as the civil calendar of the countries where Eastern Christian traditions are dominate, Easter varies between the 4th of April and the 8th of May in the Gregorian Calendar.
Also, because the Julian "full moon" is always several days after the astronomical full moon, the eastern Easter is often later, relative to the visible lunar phases, than our western Easter.
Among the Oriental Orthodox, some churches have changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar and the date for Easter, as for other fixed and movable feasts, is the same as in the Western church.
Members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), as part of their historic testimony against times and seasons, did not celebrate or observe Easter or any traditional feast days of the established Church. They believing instead that "every day is the Lord's Day," and that the elevation of one day above others suggests that it is acceptable to do un-Christian acts on other days. During our early history Quakers were persecuted for their non-observance of Holy Days.
For everyone, regardless of their religious background, Easter is a time to celebrate family, spring and renewal. Secular and commercial traditions have arisen out of Easter, as well, with children decorating Easter eggs and parents giving their children chocolate eggs and bunnies, or other types of candy.
The name Easter is believed by some sources to come from Eostra, the pagan goddess of spring and fertility, with Easter itself being a meld of Christian and pagan influences.
For our ancestors, Easter was primarily a religious holiday. For Christians, Easter is only part of a celebration that begins with Lent on Ash Wednesday and ends on Easter Sunday with each of these events having their own traditions.
Beginning on Ash Wednesday, Lent is a solemn 40-day period of fasting, abstinence, prayer and penitence. Fasting meant eating the equivalent of a single meal during the day, with a frugal diet in the morning and evening, and no snacking between meals. The most pious would weigh their food. Children were exempt from fasting, as were the sick and the elderly.
Abstinence meant that meat was strictly forbidden. The devoutly religious would deprive themselves of other vices as well: they would refrain from smoking, consuming sugar (even in coffee) and swearing. Some children were prohibited from eating any sweets or candy at all.
Holy Week began with Palm Sunday, the day when Christ was said to have entered Jerusalem. Parishioners are expected to attend church for self confession and the taking of communion. During Palm Sunday, the "palms" that were brought to church were blessed. Since palms weren't readily available locally, our ancestors normally brought fir or spruce branches, from which the cones were removed and tied together with a ribbon, along with paper flowers.
These branches were then divided into smaller bunches and put in every room in the home. Each year they were replaced, with the old ones being burned. These branches or "palms" were considered a symbol of the protection of God, were meant to bring good luck to the family, protect them from bad weather, fire, and disease, as well as bless the deceased.
Holy Week revolved around fasting, praying and attending services, even more so than during Lent, and especially during holy days.
Good Friday was generally a sombre affair, a day of mourning, recalling the death of Christ. One was not supposed to work except to accomplish the bare essentials and most shops remained closed until the service was over. I remember the service on Good Friday to be a particularly long ceremony.
There were several superstitions specific to Good Friday, to reinforce fasting and penitence:
- Anyone undertaking work of any kind on Friday will have bad luck.
- The soil must not be penetrated on Good Friday, so clearing land, farming, etc. should be avoided.
- Looking at oneself in a mirror will bring bad luck.
- Clothing washed on Good Friday will never truly be clean.
- Maple trees must never be tapped, as blood will flow instead of sap.
There were some superstitions that brought good luck:
- Bread and pastries baked on Good Friday will not mould and will heal mild illnesses like colds and whooping cough.
- A baby weaned on Good Friday will grow healthy and have a prosperous life.
- A boy wearing long pants on Good Friday will bring a happy household.
Holy Saturday was generally a quiet day, however in the evening, the Easter vigil would take place, the biggest celebration of the year, in honour of Christ's resurrection. The end of Holy Saturday officially marked the end of Lent. When I was a child, Easter Sunday was the highlight of the week.
For our ancestors, many of the markets reopened on Easter Sunday, marking the beginning of spring. Shops, stalls and even horses would be decorated with paper flowers. Many of our so-called modern traditions may have pagan roots, relating to springtime and renewal (eggs, flowers, chicks, rabbits). The exact origins of this legend are unclear, but rabbits do symbolize fertility due to their prolific breeding and thus, new life. In medieval times, the rabbit became associated with the Virgin Mary.
In this spirit of renewal, many also donned new clothing and, especially for women, new hats. People ask me if the Easter bonnet was a thing in our area and from old local newspaper articles I was able to ascertain that we indeed did have an ‘Easter Parade of Easter Bonnets’ on Main Street.
And finally, on Sunday evening, the resurrection of Christ was celebrated with a family dinner. After a long period of fasting, this meal would be particularly welcome. In our family, lamb was the meat of choice, as Jesus was called the Lamb of God. Easter has its traditional foods, from breads to Easter puddings and what one eats at Easter can often depend on your ethnic heritage.
Easter Monday, the day after Easter Sunday, is also a holiday for many Canadians. Why, well I surmise it is because it offers them an opportunity for a four-day weekend.
Eggs have been used throughout history in springtime to celebrate the new season. The tradition was taken up by the Orthodox churches and it soon spread throughout Europe, becoming closely associated with Easter celebrations.
One of the traditions of Easter I have never understood was that of the Easter bunny. The whole tradition of children putting out their empty baskets for the Easter bunny to fill while they sleep, then waking up to find their baskets filled with candy eggs and other treats seemed a mystery to me.
One cannot discuss Easter without addressing the modern traditions. While the exact origins of the Easter bunny remain unknown, the Easter tradition of exchanging eggs may go back to the ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, Persians and Gauls, for whom the egg symbolized life. One theory of where the egg decorating tradition came from is that eggs were once forbidden during Lent, thus people would paint and decorate the eggs to represent the ending of Lent and the beginning of the Easter celebration. They would then eat them on Easter Sunday as a special treat. We used to decorate eggs in our family.
A bit of trivia for you. The largest Easter egg in Canada, and until 2008, in the world, was a pysanka, a Ukrainian-style Easter egg sculpture in Vegreville, Alberta. Created in 1975 to pay homage to the Ukrainian immigrants in that region, it is 31-feet long and weighs 5,512 pounds.
The highlight for me as a child were the hot cross buns eaten on Easter Friday. I was not allowed candy but for many the holiday also meant chocolate and Easter eggs. Most families participated in an Easter egg hunt; actual eggs were soon replaced with those of the candy or chocolate variety. Eggs have been used throughout history in springtime to celebrate the new season.
Today's Easter celebrations, like those of Christmas, tend to focus more on modern traditions rather than on religious ceremony. It is interesting that when asked whether they still attended church, most tended to respond ‘yes, but only at Easter’.
I hope that you have enjoyed my look at the Easter tradition. What do you remember about your Easters?
Sources: Mircea Eliade, The Encyclopedia of Religion (1987); Tamar Andrews, Nectar and Ambrosia: An Encyclopedia of Food in World Mythology (2000); Sue Ellen Thompson, Holiday Symbols and Customs, 3rd edition (2003); Laura Neilson Bonikowsky, "Easter in Canada," The Canadian Encyclopedia, Historica Canada. Article; History.com, "Easter Symbols and Traditions"; All about Easter: Traditions and Trivia by Christelle Agboka; Origin and History of Easter in Canada – Canadian Encyclopedia website
Newmarket resident Richard MacLeod, the History Hound, has been a local historian for more than 40 years. He writes a weekly feature about our town's history in partnership with NewmarketToday, conducts heritage lectures and walking tours of local interest, and leads local oral history interviews.
