The Colorado statesman., 1914-04-11
V 3

EgSXLSIA together in the celebra-
o.''z1.s.v ton of the modern festi-
val. These include such things as
eggs, cakes, flowers presents and the
Easter hare, to say nothing of other
items obsolete in our times. Individual
notings of one or another of the cere-
monies or observances have there
been, but it is by no means easy to
lay hand on any assembling of them.
Authorities agree that the remote
ancestor of Easter was a ceremony of
pagan worship. Distant as are the
origins of the old religious forms and
intertwined as are the threads. con-
Meeting them with the present, it is
not now easy to disentangle them, SO
that it may be said that Easter OBJ
servances among the people include
remnants of the ancient worship of
the sun, the moon and fire and water
The keynote of the festival has been
from the very beginning resurrection,
the re-awakening of the vernal world
The name is that of a goddess Of
spring, and certain of the emblems
have had a correlation that is remark
able, and through thirty centuries
they have come down to US together,
preserving the early significance Of
resurrection, although the faith that
originated the ideas had ages ago
been forgotten. The idea of Easter
sprang truly from tomb; that tomb
was, however, the tomb of winter.
The strong angel that rolled away the
stone from the door of the sepulcher
was the April sun.
Although Lent has the claim Of
Christian origin, there are antiquar-
ians who assert that it is of far more
ancient origin. 1t arose. as nearly as
has yet been determined, in the fast
ing that was customary among the
Babylonians, whose worship formed
the starting point of Easter. The fast
was one of sympathy with the goddess
of reproduction, who mourned her con-
sort, and the period was marked by
fasting and an abstinence from mirth
and social festivals. Fasting has been
a widespread custom, Humboldt not
ing fasts in Mexico, where, curiously
enough, the invading Spaniards found
the natives practicing baptism, with
an invocation to Cioacooatl that the
sin which was given before the be-
ginning of the world might not visit
the child, but that cleansed by these
waters it might live and be born
anew"
Easter was at first a continuation
of the Jewish Passover and came on
the fourteenth of the month Nisan.
When the revulsion of feeling in the
church against the Jews occurred it
was changed and deliberately fixed
SO that it could by no possibility fall
on the same day as the Passover.
This matter was settled in A. d. 325.
Easter was set for the first Sunday
following the full moon that comes
after March 81. This relation to the
vernal equinox brought it to the time
Of the pagan festival of the goddess
of spring, dating back to the Astarte
worship of Babylonia. The name,
Easter, is comparatively modern, but
the principle of the story and the
emblems and observances are of this
ancient date.
Easter fires continue even now in
northern Europe" wrote Grimm
generation ago. On the Weser a tar
barrel was tied to a fire tree and
lighted in the evening and the men
and the maidens sang and danced
about it. There was a fire on every
hilltop. There were professions to
these fires and hymn singing and the
bearing of white rods were features.
The people liked to carry the fire
home with them; it was sacred fire
and embodied elements of the old
fire worship. 1t was produced by
friction, a natural method, and to kin
die it two boys were selected who
knew nothing of the vanities of the
world. Within quarter of century
in Hildesheim the Easter fire has
been struck with the steel. Here the
people take the fire home to rekindle
their extinguished hearths. The old
sacred fires were lighted by natural
means, some of them by concentration
Of the GUNS rays through mirrors