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The Decorated Easter Egg
The egg is nature's
perfect package. It has, during the span of history, represented mystery,
magic, medicine, food and omen. It is the universal symbol of Easter
celebrations throughout the world and has been dyed, painted, adorned and
embellished in the celebration of its special symbolism.
Before the egg became
closely entwined with the Christian Easter, it was honored during many
rite-of-Spring festivals. The Romans, Gauls, Chinese, Egyptians and
Persians all cherished the egg as a symbol of the universe. From ancient
times eggs were dyed, exchanged and shown reverence.
In Pagan times the egg
represented the rebirth of the earth. The long, hard winter was over; the
earth burst forth and was reborn just as the egg miraculously burst forth
with life. The egg, therefore, was believed to have special powers. It was
buried under the foundations of buildings to ward off evil; pregnant young
Roman women carried an egg on their persons to foretell the sex of their
unborn children; French brides stepped upon an egg before crossing the
threshold of their new homes.
With the advent of
Christianity the symbolism of the egg changed to represent, not nature's
rebirth, but the rebirth of man. Christians embraced the egg symbol and
likened it to the tomb from which Christ rose.
Old Polish legends
blended folklore and Christian beliefs and firmly attached the egg to the
Easter celebration. One legend concerns the Virgin Mary. It tells of the
time Mary gave eggs to the soldiers at the cross. She entreated them to be
less cruel and she wept. The tears of Mary fell upon the eggs, spotting
them with dots of brilliant color.
Another Polish legend
tells of when Mary Magdalen went to the sepulchre to anoint the body of
Jesus. She had with her a basket of eggs to serve as a repast. When she
arrived at the sepulchre and uncovered the eggs, lo, the pure white shells
had miraculously taken on a rainbow of colors.
Decorating and coloring
eggs for Easter was the custom in England during the middle ages. The
household accounts of Edward I, for the year 1290, recorded an expenditure
of eighteen pence for four hundred and fifty eggs to be gold-leafed and
colored for Easter gifts.
The most famous decorated
Easter eggs were those made by the well-known goldsmith, Peter Carl
Faberge. In 1883 the Russian Czar, Alexander, commissioned Faberge to make
a special Easter gift for his wife, the Empress Marie.
The first Faberge egg was
an egg within an egg. It had an outside shell of platinum and enameled
white which opened to reveal a smaller gold egg. The smaller egg, in turn,
opened to display a golden chicken and a jeweled replica of the Imperial
crown.
This special Faberge egg
so delighted the Czarina that the Czar promptly ordered the Faberge firm
to design further eggs to be delivered every Easter. In later years
Nicholas II, Alexander's son, continued the custom. Fifty-seven eggs were
made in all.
Ornamental egg designers
believe in the symbolism of the egg and celebrate the egg by decorating it
with superb artistry. Some use flowers and leaves from greeting cards,
tiny cherubs, jewels and elegant fabrics, braids and trims, to adorn the
eggs. They are separated, delicately hinged and glued with epoxy and
transparent cement, then when completed, they are covered with a glossy
resin finish. Although the omens and the mystery of the egg have
disappeared today, the symbolism remains, and artists continue in the old
world tradition of adorning eggs.
From Kelley and Cindy’s Easter Place
Jelly Bean Prayer
RED is for the
blood He gave.
GREEN is for the
grass He made.
YELLOW
is for the sun so bright.
BLACK is for the
dark of night.
BLUE is for the
sky He made.
WHITE
is for the grace He gave.
PURPLE is for
His hours of sorrow.
PINK is for our
new tomorrow.
A bag full of jelly beans, colorful and sweet
is a prayer, a promise, and a child's treat.
May the risen Lord bless you this Easter & always.
Author Unknown
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HOW THE DATE IS SET FOR EASTER
Lunar
Versus Solar Calendars
In Judaism, the calendar
is lunar. Each month, Nisan included, includes the phases of the moon, and
the Passover falls on the 14th day of the month, that is full moon. The
determination of this date was a secret process carefully guarded in the
Jewish temple and later, synagogues, and it was according to this
calculation that Christ observed the feast. The early Christians were Jews
and the Hebrew tradition was powerful in their minds. A party of such
conservatives known as the Quartodecimians thus pressed for a continuance
of the Jewish Passover as Easter, even to the point of schism, but they
were overruled by the Church as a whole, and for these reasons:
· The
Church resented dependence on the Synagogue for arranging its
ecclesiastical year.
· The
Hebrew Passover falls on any day of the week and this did not suit the
Christians. They wanted a Holy Week beginning with Palm Sunday, proceeding
to Good Friday and ending on Easter Sunday, commemorating the
resurrection.
Between the Jewish
Passover and the Christian Easter, there were thus a doctrinal and
calendrical severance.
On the Church, therefore,
fell the duty of setting Easter in the Christian year. The reason for the
problems came from the fact that the Hebrew and Christian calendars were
in conflict. The earlier calendar was lunar in which the unit was a month
of about 28.5 days or 342 days in a year. The second was solar in which
the unit was a year of about 365.25 days. The lunar reckoning was
Babylonian and the solar reckoning was Egyptian. Judaism held to Babylon,
Rome adopted Egypt, and the Western World has followed Rome, which is the
reason why our modern year differs from the Hebrew observance. In the case
of Christmas, the Church ignored the lunar year and no difficulty arose.
Christmas comes about four days after December 21, the winter solstice.
But with Easter the Church wished to adjust the Hebrew or lunar practice
to the solar year, and wrangling was inevitable.
The Clock
is Ticking...
If there are two clocks
ticking, one fast, the other slow, the ticks will be distinct except at
the moment when one clock overtakes the other, and the ticks synchronize.
In calendars, interval between synchronizations is called a cycle, and
over the length of the cycle between the solar and lunar years there was
much uncertainty in the days before the telescope was an astronomical
instrument.
The Jewish cycle was 84
years, but about the year 222 A.D., Hippolytus recommended a much shorter
cycle of 16 years. Rome raised a statue to him with his cycle engraved on
the sides, but despite amendment, his cycle fell into disuse and the
Church fell back on the Hebrew cycle of 84 years. Emotions were aroused.
The Western Christians observed Easter on a Sunday, the Eastern in many
cases were Quartodecimanians and preferred the 14th day of the lunar
month. It was a foretaste of the schism that was to split the Eastern
Orthodox Church from the Roman Catholic.
Anxiety over the date of
Easter was thus a reason why Constantine the Great in 325 A.D. summoned
the famous Council of Nicaea. It was decided that Easter must be
celebrated everywhere on the same day and this day must be a Sunday. It
must be the first Sunday after a full moon following the vernal equinox,
March 21 with one reservation. In the English prayerbook it is stated
thus: "and if the full moon happens upon a Sunday, Easter-day is the
Sunday after." The reason for this exception reveals the depth of the
division between the Church and the Synagogue. For whenever the full moon
fell on a Sunday, Easter would be celebrated on the same day as the Hebrew
Passover. Hence, the postponement for a week, to avoid the coincidence.
At Nicaea they had to
decide who was to manage the full moon and so announce the date of Easter.
This duty was referred to Alexandria, the citadel of astronomy, where the
bishop was to declare the date each year. Travel was slow and the
pronouncement had to be made in advance. It had to be based, not on
observation of the moon in the sky, but on mathematics.
Many cycles were tried,
one of 8 years, the Alexandrine cycle of 19 years, the Roman cycle of 84
years, and the Victorian cycle of 19 x 28 or 532 years, arranged by
Victorius of Aquitania (Victorinus) in 457 A.D. at the request of the
pope. It meant that Easter was celebrated on different Sundays in
different places, and when the pope promulgated the Victorian cycle, the
British and Irish churches continued with their cycle of 84 years. Whence
arose the fundamental question, more important than the date of Easter
itself, whether these churches were under the authority of Rome.
In 664, Oswy or Oswiu,
King of Mercia, summoned the famous Synod of Whitby where he decided to
throw in his lot with the papacy. A simultaneous observance of Easter
throughout Christendom was thus made possible and it continued for nine
centuries. At this moment, the Protestant and Roman Catholic Easters
coincided. Not so the Eastern Orthodox Church Easter.
The Julian Calendar
advanced year by year, beyond the true solar year. In 1582, therefore,
Pope Gregory XIII omitted 10 days from that calendar and so brought March
21 back to the correct vernal equinox. He found that Easter was 3 days
ahead of the full moon, and the adjustment for Easter was thus 7 days.
This resulted in the Gregorian Calendar or New Style, now generally
adopted in the modern world. The Eastern Orthodox churches, however, still
clung to the Old Style or Julian reckonings, and once more there were two
Easters in the ecclesiastical year. This problem of Easter even in the
West has yet to be completely solved, and remains a matter for the future.
Fixing
the Date of Easter
The date of Easter,
though accurately determined, varies from year to year, and Easter is thus
a "movable feast." Easter falls anywhere between March 22 and April 25, a
range of 35 days. Dependent on this variable Easter are 17 weeks of the
ecclesiastical calendar or about one third of the Christian year. These
"movable days" are as follows:
Septuagusima Sunday -------9 weeks before Easter
Sexagesima Sunday ---------8 weeks before Easter
Quinquagesima Sunday ------7 weeks before Easter
Quadragestima Sunday ------6 weeks before Easter
Shrove Tuesday ------------Eve of Lent
Ash Wednesday -------------Beginning of Lent
Lent ----------------------40 days
Palm Sunday ---------------End of Lent and Beginning of Holy Week
Good Friday
Easter Sunday
Rogation Sunday -----------5 weeks after Easter
Ascension Day -------------40 days after Easter
Whitsunday ----------------7 weeks after Easter
Trinity Sunday ------------8 weeks after Easter
In some countries, for
instance, England, this movable Easter has affected secular matters like
the sittings of courts and holidays in schools and colleges. The flow of
trade, especially in women's clothing, is tidal with Easter. There is thus
a movement for a fixed Easter. According to the Vatican there is no
canonical objection to fixing the date of Easter, a process which, we have
seen, has been going on for centuries. But the view is that the matter is
suitable for submission to an ecumenical council, which suggests that at
Rome it is regarded as an ecclesiastical matter to be dealt with by
ecclesiastical authority. In 1928 the British Parliament passed a
permissive statute making Easter the first Sunday after the second
Saturday in April. This would leave Easter among movable feasts but would
reduce the movability from 35 days to the range between April 9 and 15.
The proposed world calendar provides that each day of the year fall
perpetually on its own day of the week, Easter might most suitably be
allotted to April 8. The acceptance of this reformed calendar would thus
synchronize a fixed Easter for all Christendom and, if the synagogue
agreed, for Judaism. It has to be added that this apparently ultimate
solution to the problem is still not adopted and the problem is ongoing.
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