We explain what Easter is for Christianity, its origin, history, and meaning. In addition, we tell you what the Jewish Passover or Pesach is.
What is Easter?
Easter is a Christian holiday, also known as Easter, Easter Sunday, Easter Sunday, or Easter Sunday. It commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ on the third day after his crucifixion, according to the story contained in the New Testament of the Christian Bible.
This is the celebration that ends Holy Week (which begins on the previous Sunday, called Palm Sunday) and the Easter Triduum (which commemorates the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus from Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday). It takes place on a mobile date, which corresponds to the first full moon after the spring equinox of the northern hemisphere (March 21). Therefore, this date ranges between March 22 and April 25 of each year in the calendar of the Catholic Church and Protestant churches, and between April 4 and May 8 in the calendar of the Orthodox Church, which is governed by the old Julian calendar. You must read about Christmas Tree once.
The way of commemorating Easter varies from one country to another and from one Christian tradition to another, but in general it involves processions, liturgical celebrations, family gatherings and, in much of the West, the decoration and consumption of Easter eggs. Furthermore, Easter Sunday marks the beginning of the Easter season, a liturgical period of 50 days that ends on Pentecost Sunday, a day that, according to Christian tradition, commemorates the coming of the Holy Spirit and the beginning of the Church’s activities.
Easter is the most important holiday in the Christian calendar, as it commemorates the central episode of its religious belief: the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, which according to Christian tradition occurred in the Roman province of Judea, between the years 30 and 33 AD.
Despite this, Easter has important links with Jewish tradition, specifically with Pesach or the Jewish Passover, and in the biblical story, the death and resurrection of Jesus take place during the Jewish Passover. Maybe you should definitely read about Climate and Weather once.
KEY POINTS
- Easter, also called Resurrection Sunday, is a Christian religious holiday that commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ on the third day after his crucifixion.
- It marks the end of Holy Week and is celebrated on a moving date between March 22 and April 25 each year.
- It is celebrated with processions, liturgical celebrations, family gatherings and, in some countries, the decoration and consumption of Easter eggs.
- It has roots in the Jewish Passover (Pesach), which celebrates the liberation of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt, and is related to spring as a time of rebirth.
What is celebrated on Easter?
Easter Sunday is the day on which Christians commemorate the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, narrated in the New Testament. According to the biblical account, this would have occurred on the third day after his death, crucified on Mount Golgotha, also known as Calvary. According to this belief, the resurrection of Jesus fulfilled the prophecies expressed in the Old Testament about the coming of the Messiah.
In addition, Easter celebrates the revelation to the faithful of the divine plan for the salvation of humanity, that is, for the defeat of death and the eternal life of the spirit. Christian doctrine establishes that the death of Jesus Christ freed all human beings from their sins and renewed their covenant with God, their creator.
Origin and history of Easter
Like many other Christian traditions, Easter has important roots in the Jewish tradition expressed in the Old Testament. Specifically, during the celebration of Pesach, that is, the commemoration of the departure of the Hebrew people from Egypt (where, according to the biblical text, they lived in slavery) towards the Promised Land of Canaan, guided by the prophet Moses.
In this commemoration, the Jews also remember the ten plagues with which God punished the Egyptian people, and in particular the leap that the angel of death made over the Hebrew houses when he went in search of the Egyptian firstborn. This “leap” was called in Hebrew pesach (which expressed the idea of “passing over” the houses), a word that in liturgical Latin became pascha and later Easter due to its similarity with the Latin term pascuum, which refers to a place of pastures, that is, a place where the flock is freed from hunger.
This transformation of the word was due to the expansion of Christianity during the time of the Roman Empire: according to Christian theology, when Jesus Christ was resurrected, the meaning of the traditional Jewish Passover changed, and Easter came to represent the “leap” or passage from death to eternal life. In any case, in both cases it is a celebration of salvation and protection associated with the divine.
The Christian Easter began to be celebrated in chronological agreement with the Jewish Passover. This was done for several centuries, until the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD decided to stop using the Hebrew calendar to calculate the date and opted to celebrate it on the first Sunday after the full moon following the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere (as was already done in the churches of Rome and Alexandria). This was because Christians emphasized the significance of Sunday, which was the day of the week on which Jesus Christ was resurrected according to the Bible, while the celebration of the Jewish Passover makes no distinction between the days of the week.
Meaning of Passover
The Christian Passover could be described as the Christian reinterpretation of the Jewish Passover. Not only because, according to Christian tradition, Jesus of Nazareth died and was resurrected during the time of the Jewish Passover celebration, but also because the last supper that Jesus had with his apostles transformed the meaning of the traditional Passover supper for his faithful, since the bread and wine were assigned an equivalence with the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
On the other hand, the sacrifice of the lamb that the Jews offered to God in the Temple of Jerusalem was replaced in Christian theology by the sacrifice on the cross of Jesus, called the “lamb of God,” who through his immolation would have freed human beings from sin and sealed a new alliance between God and humanity. In addition, the death and resurrection of Jesus was important in this belief because it was considered to fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament about the arrival and sacrifice of the Messiah, the “anointed” of God, which was considered proof of the second coming of Christ and of the coming judgment of God on Earth, in which those who did wrong would be punished and the righteous would be saved.
Finally, Easter in the northern hemisphere coincides with the arrival of spring, a season associated with rebirth and the end of the harshness of winter. Agricultural and pastoral peoples often celebrate this event, as happened in Europe when the expansion of Christianity began, and this possibly favored the introduction of Easter as a holiday in the context of Christian evangelization during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Easter symbols
Christian Easter involves various traditional symbols:
- The Easter candle: The main symbol of Easter for Catholics is a large lit white candle, on which the letters alpha (⍺) and omega (⍵) are inscribed, the first and last of the Greek alphabet, to symbolize the eternity of Christ. The light of this candle represents the hope of resurrection in the face of the darkness of suffering and death. Other elements that make up the Easter candle are the cross, five grains of incense that represent the five wounds of Christ, and the current year that symbolizes the presence of God in the present.
- Flowers: Easter coincides in the northern hemisphere with the arrival of spring, a time of rebirth in which everything turns green and plants bloom. This is expressed through the presence of flowers alongside images of Christ and in various arrangements, which in this way also become symbols of the rebirth of Christ and of hope in eternal salvation.
- Easter eggs: The origin of eggs as a symbol of Easter is uncertain, and it is not a custom shared by all Christian traditions. It is very common in Europe and America, and has some antecedents in the meaning that pagan peoples (as Christians called those who did not profess Christianity or Judaism) gave to the egg as an emblem of fertility and rebirth. This symbol was incorporated into Christianity, and Easter eggs became a common gift, whether decorated in different ways, or made of candy, dough or chocolate.
- The Easter bunny: The rabbit was an animal associated with fertility and spring in some European peoples, and was adopted by the Christian tradition of some countries to represent the character who carried Easter eggs in a basket for children. This eventually led to the production of chocolate bunnies. There are also interpretations that associate the rabbit’s emergence from its burrow at the end of winter with the concept of rebirth.
Passover
Passover is the commemoration of the liberation of the Hebrew people from their condition of slavery in Ancient Egypt and their departure to the Promised Land (Canaan), as narrated in the Book of Exodus of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, equivalent to the Old Testament of the Christian Bible.
It is one of the three pilgrimage festivals of Judaism (Shalosh Regalim), that is, those in which the Jews went on pilgrimage to the temple of Jerusalem when it had not yet been destroyed, to offer a sacrifice. According to the traditional Hebrew calendar, Pesach begins on the 15th of Nisan, and lasts for 7 days in Israel (8 in the diaspora) during which it is forbidden to consume foods derived from fermented cereals, and unleavened bread (without yeast) is eaten instead.
Work also ceases, prayers are said, and ritual foods are prepared, especially for the seder, the family meal celebrated on the first night and at which passages about the Exodus taken from the Haggadah (a collection of texts from Jewish tradition) are read.
References
All the information we offer is supported by authoritative and up-to-date bibliographic sources, which ensure reliable content in line with our editorial principles.
- Hillerbrand, H. J. (2024). Easter. Encyclopedia Britannica. britannica.com
- Johnson, P. (2017). History of Christianity. B Editions.
- Pikaza, X. and Aya, A. (2009). Dictionary of the three religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Divine Word.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2024). Passover. Encyclopedia Britannica. britannica.com
