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Easter Symbols and Customs
Since Easter is coming up.. I found this article from Headlight Newspaper Webpage and thought this is neat to share with you all.. so enjoy the article.. Happy Easter to you all!
Easter Symbols and Customs
In Conway and Perry counties on Easter Sunday morning, there will be thousands of people who will not celebrate it as any special day. They will not attend church anywhere nor will they think about it as being anything other than another Sunday, a day of rest for them because it isn’t their work day. However, for Christians, Easter Sunday is a special day when they remember and celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is referred to in the Bible as the Lamb of God Who sacrificed His life for all mankind’s eternal life.
Churches all over America will celebrate this Sunday with special songs and messages centered around Jesus’ Resurrection. Over the course of many years, the celebration, even in churches, has grown to include Easter eggs, the Easter bunny, an Easter parade and new clothes. Many of these traditions apparently were adapted from pre-Christian legends and lore.
Sharman Robertson, a Hallmark historian and archivist, has explained the meaning of some of the origin of Easter customs on the Hallmark Web site.
We have all heard that the egg, which got a bad rap for a while as being bad for your cholesterol, has achieved its rating once again as an almost perfect food. It denotes the beginning of life or the universe in all cultures. A Latin proverb says, “All life comes from an egg.”
Eggs were dyed and eaten during spring festivals in ancient Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome, and colored eggs were given as gifts to celebrate the coming of spring.
According to Robertson, Christians of the Near East adopted this tradition and the egg became a religious symbol: It represented the tomb from which Jesus broke forth. The various customs associated with Easter eggs were not recorded in Western Europe until the 15th century. Speculation is that missionaries or knights of the Crusades were responsible for bringing the tradition of coloring eggs westward. In Medieval times, eggs often were colored red to symbolize the blood of Christ. Chocolate or candy eggs emerged in the late 1800s. Plastic Easter eggs made their debut in the early 1960s.
Another symbol of Easter is the Easter bunny. Its origin came from pre-Christian fertility lore. Hares and rabbits served as symbols of abundant new life in the spring season. Actually, it is really a hare, not a rabbit, that symbolizes Easter. From antiquity, hares have been a symbol for the moon, and the first full moon after the vernal equinox determines the date for Easter.
Now, we all know hares don’t lay eggs. So, according to legend, the Easter bunny was originally a large, handsome bird belonging to the goddess Eostre (Easter). One day she magically changed her pet bird into a hare. Because the Easter bunny is still a bird at heart, he continues to build a straw nest and fill it with eggs.
A German legend says that a poor woman decorated eggs for her children to find during a famine. At the moment they found them, they looked up to see a big rabbit hopping away.
The Easter parade and wearing of new clothes is said to come from the early church where those who were baptized at the Easter vigil dressed in white robes and wore the robes during Easter week as a symbol of their new life in Christ. People who had been baptized in previous years wore new clothes to indicate their sharing in the new life. New clothes at Easter became a symbol of Easter grace. An American belief is that good luck can be ensured for the year by wearing three new things on Easter Sunday.
The Easter sunrise service was brought to America by Protestant immigrants from Moravia who held the first such service in Bethlehem, Pa., in 1741. Origins of the early morning time stem from a passage in the Bible from Luke which tells us that “on the first day of the week, at early dawn,” women visited Jesus’ tomb and found it empty.
There are even Easter weather superstitions: If it rains on Easter Sunday, it will rain the following seven Sundays. A white Christmas will bring a green Easter, and a green Christmas will bring a white Easter.
I remember many, many years ago, my dad, the late Rev. L.C. Miller, and some of the members of First Assembly went to Petit Jean Mountain for a sunrise service on Easter Sunday. Believe it or not, some snowflakes floated around and the wind was so cold, we thought we were going to freeze. Of course, all of us young girls were dressed in our new spring dresses and we wouldn’t have covered them up for anything.
If you don’t regularly attend church, why not do something different this year and take your family to an Easter service at one of our many churches.
Since Easter is coming up.. I found this article from Headlight Newspaper Webpage and thought this is neat to share with you all.. so enjoy the article.. Happy Easter to you all!
Easter Symbols and Customs
In Conway and Perry counties on Easter Sunday morning, there will be thousands of people who will not celebrate it as any special day. They will not attend church anywhere nor will they think about it as being anything other than another Sunday, a day of rest for them because it isn’t their work day. However, for Christians, Easter Sunday is a special day when they remember and celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is referred to in the Bible as the Lamb of God Who sacrificed His life for all mankind’s eternal life.
Churches all over America will celebrate this Sunday with special songs and messages centered around Jesus’ Resurrection. Over the course of many years, the celebration, even in churches, has grown to include Easter eggs, the Easter bunny, an Easter parade and new clothes. Many of these traditions apparently were adapted from pre-Christian legends and lore.
Sharman Robertson, a Hallmark historian and archivist, has explained the meaning of some of the origin of Easter customs on the Hallmark Web site.
We have all heard that the egg, which got a bad rap for a while as being bad for your cholesterol, has achieved its rating once again as an almost perfect food. It denotes the beginning of life or the universe in all cultures. A Latin proverb says, “All life comes from an egg.”
Eggs were dyed and eaten during spring festivals in ancient Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome, and colored eggs were given as gifts to celebrate the coming of spring.
According to Robertson, Christians of the Near East adopted this tradition and the egg became a religious symbol: It represented the tomb from which Jesus broke forth. The various customs associated with Easter eggs were not recorded in Western Europe until the 15th century. Speculation is that missionaries or knights of the Crusades were responsible for bringing the tradition of coloring eggs westward. In Medieval times, eggs often were colored red to symbolize the blood of Christ. Chocolate or candy eggs emerged in the late 1800s. Plastic Easter eggs made their debut in the early 1960s.
Another symbol of Easter is the Easter bunny. Its origin came from pre-Christian fertility lore. Hares and rabbits served as symbols of abundant new life in the spring season. Actually, it is really a hare, not a rabbit, that symbolizes Easter. From antiquity, hares have been a symbol for the moon, and the first full moon after the vernal equinox determines the date for Easter.
Now, we all know hares don’t lay eggs. So, according to legend, the Easter bunny was originally a large, handsome bird belonging to the goddess Eostre (Easter). One day she magically changed her pet bird into a hare. Because the Easter bunny is still a bird at heart, he continues to build a straw nest and fill it with eggs.
A German legend says that a poor woman decorated eggs for her children to find during a famine. At the moment they found them, they looked up to see a big rabbit hopping away.
The Easter parade and wearing of new clothes is said to come from the early church where those who were baptized at the Easter vigil dressed in white robes and wore the robes during Easter week as a symbol of their new life in Christ. People who had been baptized in previous years wore new clothes to indicate their sharing in the new life. New clothes at Easter became a symbol of Easter grace. An American belief is that good luck can be ensured for the year by wearing three new things on Easter Sunday.
The Easter sunrise service was brought to America by Protestant immigrants from Moravia who held the first such service in Bethlehem, Pa., in 1741. Origins of the early morning time stem from a passage in the Bible from Luke which tells us that “on the first day of the week, at early dawn,” women visited Jesus’ tomb and found it empty.
There are even Easter weather superstitions: If it rains on Easter Sunday, it will rain the following seven Sundays. A white Christmas will bring a green Easter, and a green Christmas will bring a white Easter.
I remember many, many years ago, my dad, the late Rev. L.C. Miller, and some of the members of First Assembly went to Petit Jean Mountain for a sunrise service on Easter Sunday. Believe it or not, some snowflakes floated around and the wind was so cold, we thought we were going to freeze. Of course, all of us young girls were dressed in our new spring dresses and we wouldn’t have covered them up for anything.
If you don’t regularly attend church, why not do something different this year and take your family to an Easter service at one of our many churches.
