The Portland daily press., 1884-04-12
Easter and Easter Customs
BY c. W. ERNST.

oAoi VI AAeo custom Oh the American people,
the keeping of Easter seems to increase from
year to year. We.have she modest beginning
of a literature ON Easter, there Is probably not
village which does not observe the day in
some measure, and polite society has agreed to
emerge on Easter Day from its season of COM
parative retirement, which has lasted through
Lent. Milliners, florists, and caterers find that
Easter occasions marked change in their sew
eral trades, because thenceforward society will
do freely what 1t reirained from doing in Lent.
In the Catholic, Episcopal and Lutheran
churches, hardly any marriages are celebrated
during Lent; but nearly all churches observe
Easter as the joyous day of the resurrection.
If the progress Of the last twenty years con-
tinues, Easter bids fair to become flower SUM-
day. on which the churches are decorated
more or less profusely. On that day the young
people appear in their new dresses, aud the
older ones attend the public services in less
exuberant spirit. The younger people admire
the flowers, enjoy the music, and think pleas
antly of the resurrection in nature and spirit,
while the less hopeful elders remember de.
parted friends, and wonder, perhaps, whether
there is resurrection of the flesh as there Is
certainly spripg revival of nature and natu-
raj hopes. Easter In America has become a
church holiday OF increasing popularity; it Is q
great day in polite society, and it offers the OPP
portunity for distributing untold thousands of
pretty little cards, in which children delight as
much as do others, if they have kept the child
like spirit What is new, perhaps, In the
American celebration of Easter, is the memo
rial character occasionally given to the day.
To commemorate the dead on particular day
is not new. But to make Easter q sort OF
Protestant All Souls day ia an innovation, the
general reception of WI ich remains to be seen.
Up to the present time it is the exception to
have special services in honor of the dead, but
the custom is growing.
A few of our denominations have always
celebrated Easter; but in most churches the
custom Is new. being in many cases less than
ten or twenty years old. Calvinism aud Pufi-
tanism we're bitterly opposed to a festival in
which they beheld very little, save Catholic
abuses and even the relics of pagan antiquity.
Nor was this sentiment unfourded, for the
the Easter celebrations witnessed by the early
reformers, especial during the sixteenth GEN.
tury, we're regular mixture OF ecclesiastical
and popular superstitioDs, of unseemly ex-
cesses and religious perversions. This is Illus
tra,ed by such phrase as e ,ster-ale, an old
English name for Easter, taken from the ale
formerly offered for sale on that day by the
clergy, and by the significant rhyme
Christ is risen Christ Is risen,
All the Jews must go to prison.
IT,
pie still believe that the tun dances on Easter
morning, and the pask eggs, or Easter eggs,
once had the benediction OF the church. The
ritual Of Pope Plus ", made for the use of
England, ireland and Scotland, contained a
prayer: "Bless, o Lord, we beseech thee, this
thy creature of eggs. that it may become q
wholesome susteuance to thy fsithfu, servants
eating it in thankfulness to Thee, on account
of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ"
etc.
Up to the time OF the Reformation 1t was
customary for the clergy to make pulpit Jokes
on Easter day, and in some cases the priests ar
ranged regular game, or comedy, both In
and around their sacred edifces. A few Of the
quaint old customs still survive in the rural
parts of England, the most singular, perhaps,
being the three lifts. On Easter Monday the
men lift the women, on the day following the
women lift the men. The person to be lifted,
or heaved, is placed in chair, elevated three
times above the shoulders of the lifters, and
then let off with kiss or the payment If 9
gratuity. This custom points to the days Of
pagan antiquity, as do the Easter eggs, which
are occasionally called pask paste ergs. No
wonder the Puritans and Reformers objected
to the Easter extravsgsnces, which were part
ly Pagan, partly Catholic, and in part Jewish.
The Jewish elements in Easter are more
marked than some students of folklore appear
ready to admit. Hardly any languages, save
English and German, fail to call Easter by its
Jewish name. which is explained In the twelfth
chapter of Exodus. The Hebrew word pesach
was paScha in Arameic, the language of Pal
estine in the time OF Christ. Even the Swedes
and Danes, who have very few Jews among
them, have dropped the Germanic word Eas-
ter or Ostern; and Bishop Ulfilas, who trans
lated the Bible for the Goths of the fourth
century, never used it, though he must have
known the word Easter. In English and Ger
man the secondary nama for Easter is Jewish
aud appears in the words pass-lamb, past-eggs,
aud pasque-fower. The wori passover is q
translation of the Hebrew pesach. Wyclffe
uses pase for passover, and q writer of the six.
teeDth century speaks of "Pesce and Bull"
when he means Easter and Yule (Christmas).
The Jewish element in Easter appears still
more fcrcibly in the changeable time chosen
for the celebration of Easter. The Jews still
cling to the moon year, and it is due to this
autiquated mode of calculating time, that Eas-
ter happens to be determined by the moon, as
is the Jewish passover, which the Nicene faith
ers abhorred. The Christian church of the
second aud fourth centuries succeeded in max
log Easter fall on Sunday, and solemn canons
condemned the heretics, who allowed the jew
ish and Christian passover to occur on the sa-
cred day. The Jew-Christians who began to
celebrate Easter on the evening of the four
teenth day in Nissan, the first month of the
Jewish year, were called QuartodecimaDians
But the Western church was more Jealous
than intelligent, for it is an ecclesiastical
moon which was chosen to determine the day
for celebrating Easter. Very clearly, this is q
jewish tradition, though somewhat modified
by the adoption OF Alexsndrine moon tables,
which do not tally with the facts of astrcn
omy, and have repeatedly led to mistakes, as In
1878, and also to an occasional celebration of
the Jewish and Christian passover on the
same day, as in 1926. The oecumenical coun
Gil of Nice is responsible for the singular
choice of Easter days, and indirectly for the
trouble of the astronomers and eccesiastlcs In
computing the great spring festival. Nor have
the Jews escaped all punishment for the mis-
chief which their lunar calculation of Passover
has occasiened in Christendom. Daring
Lent and at Easter, medieval Christendom
used to be specially severe in its abuse and
persecution Of helpless Jews.
Yet even in miuor matters the Christian
people of Europe have followed Jewish prec-
edents, an illustration being the tanxy, which
Pepys mentions, and the tsnzy cakes. which
in some portions of England are still eaten
about Easter. The oldest precedent for these
is found In the Mosaic rule that the Jews
should eat the Passover lamb and unleavsned
bread with bitter herbs" The Jews were
required, also, to burn that which remained"
of this passover meal 1t has been assumed
that this was the origin OF the Easter fires
which are common in Northern Germany.
But the German and Scandinavian Easter
fires are always lighted on mountains or hill
tons and tho uniforonity NJ +bia cr cforn % pvot