The Saturday Before Easter

The Saturday before Easter is not like the night before Christmas. Not is it like the day before a birthday, and certainly it has nothing in common with New Year’s Eve. No.

The Saturday before Easter is a liminal zone – a place “betwixt and between” – Good Friday and Easter Sunday, part of a three-day observance in the Christian faith of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, a time that often corresponds to the Jewish tradition of celebrating Passover. Saturday is remembered, and, among some sects is commemorated, as “Holy Saturday,” the day Jesus lay in his tomb. As such, Holy Saturday is a good day to reflect on what it all means. What does the story of Easter provide us? What does it mean to me?

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First, the date for the celebration itself. Easter is a “moveable feast” in that the date for its observance depends on the date of the last full moon and how that date is calculated. From a convenient wiki you can Google using nothing more than the word “Easter” (and a wiki with other useful links included, such as the excerpt that follows): 

The First Council of Nicaea (325) established the date of Easter as the first Sunday after the full moon (the Paschal Full Moon) following the northern hemisphere's vernal equinox. Ecclesiastically, the equinox is reckoned to be on March 21 (even though the equinox occurs, astronomically speaking, on March 20 in most years), and the "Full Moon" is not necessarily the astronomically correct date. The date of Easter therefore varies between March 22 and April 25. Eastern Christianity bases its calculations on the Julian calendar whose March 21 corresponds, during the 21st century, to April 3 in the Gregorian calendar, in which the celebration of Easter therefore varies between April 4 and May 8.

The “correct” date is still in dispute. As late as 1997 the World Council of Churches proposed a global change making use of scientific calculations that would finally provide one universal date for Easter. While the WCC approved that proposal, it has yet to be implemented.

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Easter is considered a Christian celebration, but not all Christians celebrate Easter. The Puritans, for example, saw it as a “Popish” invention and refused to recognize it. They and other Christian literalists – Congregationalists, Anabaptists, Quakers, etc. – have also (and rightly) equated the celebration of Easter with pagan rituals of fertility/Spring. Some of the Founding Fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, didn’t believe in what he called the “magic and superstition” surrounding the Easter story. In Jefferson’s case, he created his own Bible solely made from the teachings of Jesus.

For those Christians who do celebrate Easter, the key ideas summarized from the relevant scriptures are: Jesus foresaw and foretold his own death during the Last Supper; he was crucified, betrayed, and buried; the tomb where he was buried was the next day found empty; and for the next 40 days he appeared as the risen Lord before various men and women. For example: 

John 20:19-25

19Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.

20And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the LORD.

21Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.

22And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost:

23Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.

24But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.

25The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the LORD. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.

Another favorite passage, called “The Great Commission” reads: 

Matthew 28:16-20

16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Scholars have long disagreed about the meaning and contested these accounts, as they were written a long time after the historical Jesus walked the Earth and may reflect the interests and goals of early church leaders. But for the faithful these disagreements or doubts about the resurrection are beside the point; you either accept on faith the truth of a risen Christ who sits on the right hand of God and his promise of eternal life, or you don’t.

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The Easter Bunny and colored Easter eggs may seem to have little to do with the risen Christ, but in fact they are symbolically related. Bunnies are symbols of fertility, of Springtime, of a “rebirth” of all that gives us life. The eggs of Easter are colored red (the blood of Christ) or green (fertility/Springtime).

Why eggs? Two reasons. For Catholics, the 40 days preceding Easter known as Lent were traditionally a time when the eating of eggs was forbidden. So, given that hens don’t stop laying eggs for religious holidays, there were a lot of eggs available for the Easter celebration. Second, eggs symbolize new life. Hence, the seemingly odd combination of the Easter Bunny and a basket of colored eggs hidden for children to find provide a metaphor parallel to Santa Claus and gifts for children under the tree at Christmas. 

Full disclosure: I favor bunnies of all kinds, real, symbolic, and especially chocolate. I also like stories with rabbits in them, from Alice in Wonderland to the recent film Hop. So it is that I don’t mind an Easter Bunny component in an otherwise sober tale of death and rebirth. If anything, a big happy rabbit distributing colored eggs to enchanted children places the story’s emphasis on joy in life, and that just makes me smile.

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These are some of the relevant facts, symbols, and speculation to inform a contemporary understanding of Easter. But you can fully appreciate the facts, know about the symbols, and have read through reams of scholarly speculation and still not “know” the meaning of Easter. That knowledge is the mystery of faith and it transcends the secular stuff. I’m not even sure that you have to believe all of the supposed facts (I don’t), or buy into the symbols, or have read various interpretations to arrive at an acceptance of what the Easter story gives to us or inspires within us.

The stories that make up the life of Jesus provide Christians with a Master Narrative. They teach us by example and by parable how we may choose to live, how we should treat and be of service to others, how to accept and atone for our inevitable failures, and why we should believe that there is a purpose and meaning to the awe and all of it that we, too, are part of. But it is the singular Easter story of the death and rebirth of Jesus, the transformation of a human life into an immortal story that inspires me and confirms my faith.

Why? Because for me, the Easter story is the ultimate story of hope, of redemption against all odds, not “a life everlasting” so much as an eternal peace born of finally knowing our narrative place, the storied place God makes for us, out here among the stars. There is no greater story than that.