On This Day: Easter

On This Day, for the Easter holiday, by Britannica.

I’m Kurt Heintz. Today we’re diving into Easter’s origin story, and we have a few words about how it’s celebrated today, in both East and West.

Like all good podcast topics, this one starts with a little controversy—and if you think a holiday celebrated with pastel eggs and bunnies can’t get complicated, be prepared for an awakening.

But before we get into that dispute, let’s cover what this holiday is.

Easter marks the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, three days after his death by crucifixion. The birth of Christ is celebrated in the Christmas holiday, of course, which happens with much fanfare, music, and feasting. The story behind Easter gives Christianity more cause for celebration. Redemption, mercy, the Trinity, the relationship between God and humankind, and many more ideas in the Christian experience connect with the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ, and they permeate Christian life throughout the year.

To get to the religious roots and purpose of Easter, we humbly recommend speaking with an ordained member of a Christian church… or perhaps with two or more. The different denominations of Christianity agree on the centrality of Easter, but their traditions and practices vary. As an encyclopedia, however, we also have a few notes to share. Let’s listen to the story of the Resurrection as it is told in the Gospel According to Luke:

[Luke 24:1–7 Authorized King James Version]:
Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them. And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre. And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments: and as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.

The story of the Resurrection is agreed upon across Christian denominations. But religious tradition does not denote the exact date of Jesus’ death nor the date of his resurrection. The Christian Gospels document the Last Supper that Jesus Christ shared with his disciples as a Passover meal. The Gospels cite it as happening shortly before Christ was crucified, thereby establishing a connection with the Jewish calendar, but also a debated time. Some biblical scholars have disagreed about the amount of time between the Last Supper and the Crucifixion. In Asia Minor, Christians observed the day of the Crucifixion on day 14 of the month of Nisan in the Jewish calendar, the same day Passover is celebrated. That meant that the Resurrection was observed two days later, on 16 Nisan, regardless of the day of the week. However, Western Christians preferred to observe the Resurrection on the first day of the week, choosing the first Sunday after 14 Nisan.

In early Christianity, the disputes that arose over the process of choosing the date to celebrate the Resurrection became known as the Paschal controversies. Why Paschal? Here it’s worth noting that Easter and Passover were so entwined for early Christians that the Greek word for Passover, “Pascha,” came to mean Easter.

As more churches opted for the Sunday celebration, the Council of Nicaea declared in the year 325 that Easter should be observed on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox—a complicated decree that allows Easter to fall on any Sunday between March 22 and April 25.

The Council of Nicaea united Easter celebrations, at least until 1582 when Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian calendar. Since Eastern Orthodox churches continue to follow the Julian calendar (which is now 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar), and they prohibit Easter from occurring before or at the same time as Passover, Orthodox churches generally celebrate Easter later than Protestants and Roman Catholics do, between April 4 and May 8.

Though multiple churches have expressed a desire for a unified date for Easter, a formal agreement on such a date remains elusive. The Second Vatican Council in 1963 (Vatican II to many people) had no objection to having Easter on a fixed day on the calendar, but that has yet to be adopted or agreed upon.

Those are some of our insights for the great Easter debate on the date. When we return, a little something about Easter customs.

And so… Doesn’t Easter have something to do with eggs?

Actually, yes. Though the traditional Easter egg hunt is a far stretch from the holiday’s religious origins, eggs as a symbol of fertility and restoration actually preceded Christianity. Non-Christian Europeans in the premodern world—sometimes called “pagans”—viewed eggs as a symbol of regeneration akin to the first flowers of spring. That association was picked up by early Christians, who appropriated eggs as a symbol of rebirth. For them, though, it wasn’t about springtime or the earth: it was the rebirth of Jesus Christ.

Dyeing and decorating Easter eggs, then, is an ancient practice. Though the tradition’s exact origins are obscure, we know eggs have been dyed in both the Eastern Orthodox and Western churches since the Middle Ages. Eggs, milk, and meat were forbidden foods during the Lenten season before Easter since as early as Thomas Aquinas’s writings from the 13th century. Some churches continue this practice today. But while milk and meat would spoil when left unconsumed, eggs would not. With the egg already a symbol of rebirth, decorating them became a natural next step.

At first, the Eastern Orthodox Church designated that the dye for eggs should be red, in remembrance of Jesus’ blood shed on the cross. In countries like Greece and Ukraine, red eggs are prominent. But in Ukraine in particular, egg decorating is a high art and red is hardly the only color. A traditional craft known as pysanka wraps ornate patterns and symmetries around eggs, where lines are first traced in beeswax and then the eggs are dipped in colors that dazzle the eye.

In the West, the pastel color palette of spring took over, and egg dyeing was much simpler. It became an activity associated more with secular Easter traditions than religious ones.

And that is our look at Easter for On This Day. Thanks for listening to us! We have much more on Christianity’s origins, history, and traditions on Britannica.com. The Bible reading from the Book of Luke was by Henry Bolzon. Our program was written by Meg Matthias and edited by yours truly. For Britannica, I’m Kurt Heintz.

This program is copyrighted by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.