Just before Easter this year, a bright retail advertisement, the glossy type that fills Sunday newspapers, caught my attention. My eye went right to the winged bunny. It was just above the headline, “Easter Decor &Figurines.”
The headline also described the flying hare and its companions as “perfect decor items to accent your home; buy one, get one free; 50 percent off.” The double-sided, full-page ad had coupons promising one thing for free and something else for 40 percent off.
It was an alter call for consumerism. Hopefully, most parents give their children more insight into the meanings of Easter, and any major holiday, than they can glean from flying bunny figurines.
Easter represents efforts by millions of people over thousands of years to celebrate, honor and understand things that are bigger than themselves. It is a holiday that intersects the history, values and faith of at least three religions or cultures.
Googling “History of Easter” leads to more than 46 million results.
The Christian Easter is the most visible religious celebration of the holiday, at least in the United States. It marks the defining event of Christianity: the resurrection of Jesus Christ following his crucifixion after the Passover meal.
Christ’s resurrection answers bigger-than-life questions with a transcending, hope-filled message to believers. The lessons during the Lenten season leading to Easter are often taught in accepting ways that provide a warm sense of belonging.
An argument can be made that a belief in resurrection helps create an optimistic outlook and culture. It is a belief that we can all and always start anew each day.
But the Christian Easter celebration can never be entirely separated from the sacred Passover practiced by Jews. Passover was established by Moses and predates the Ten Commandments by a few years in the wilderness.
Passover is embedded in the Jews’ liberation from 400 years of slavery, is intimately connected to the parting of the Red Sea and reveals God’s love for his people. More reasons for hope and belonging.
The specific dates for celebrating Passover and Easter are put on the calendar in relationship to full moons and spring equinoxes. Well before the Jewish and Christian faiths, celebrations of moons and equinoxes were paired with symbols of fertility and new life – rabbits and colored eggs.
Easter, Passover and celebrations of moons and equinoxes are expressions of a spiritual need in human beings to address universal issues in meaningful ways. The issues include human beings’ relationships with each other, with the world, with time, with work and with God.
Parents who don’t have those vehicles can help their children to ponder the depth of these issues. They can raise questions. “Why do we get together every year to color and hide Easter eggs?”
Parents can make statements. “Most people like to celebrate spring time or Easter because it helps them feel hopeful and optimistic.”
Celebrating seasons helps humans deal with another of our core needs. We must find ways to balance our needs for change on one hand and for sameness on the other.
Change stimulates, excites and challenges us. Sameness calms, stabilizes and prepares us. As humans, we need both change and sameness in our lives. Seasons provide humans with real changes in the same way year after year.
Celebrating seasons honors the way seasons help fill our need to balance change and sameness. Celebrations express gratitude for the way seasons provide both newness and predictability, both excitement and calmness.
I first saw this balance described by C.S. Lewis in “The Screwtape Letters.” If we don’t address our needs for change and sameness, we run the risk that we will pervert our need for change into an insatiable appetite for novelty.
Novelty doesn’t substitute for genuine change, even when it promises to be perfect. Novelty doesn’t stimulate, excite and challenge us, even when it is 50 percent off or two for the price of one.
Bill France, a father of three, is a child advocate in the criminal justice system and has worked as director of clinical programs at Luther Child Center in Everett. You can send e-mail to bill@billfrance.com.
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