Whatever Happened to Easter?

In musing on this past Holy week I am struck by the apparent lack of enthusiasm for the Easter season in our culture. Christmas is a big deal with all the hype and commercialism and the prevalent protests speaking out against said commercialism. Despite the indifferentism towards religion in society there is plenty of reference to the birth of Christ and loving one’s neighbor during the Advent season and that is all to the good. But Easter? All we have is a glut of chocolate bunnies and eating pizza on Good Friday and the NCAA basketball tournament! Holy Week does not even seem significant enough to overly commercialize it and nobody cares enough to complain about the commercialism that does exist. My daughter thinks it is because there is no exchange of gifts on Easter. I fear there is more than a little truth to this.

The Joy of Easter

But shouldn’t Easter be "the most wonderful time of the year"?
After all, Easter is supposed to be the celebration of the resurrection of Christ! Before this event the outlook of humanity was " life stinks then you die". Death defined human existence and gave it no significance beyond the grave and thus gave little meaning to our existence, particularly those on the margins of existence (that is to say, most people).

Our Lord’s resurrection changed that. In rising from the dead He demonstrated that death is not the final arbiter of Human meaning. Pope John Paul II wrote;

"The Lamb that was slain is alive, bearing the marks of his passion in the splendor of the resurrection. He alone is master of all events of history: he opens its ‘seals’ (cf rev 5:1-10) and proclaims, in time and beyond, the power of life over death. In the ‘new Jerusalem’, that new world towards which human history is traveling, death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.’(Rev 21:4)" Evangelium Vitae, Pauline Books and Media, Boston MA. 1995, p. 165-166

With His ressurection He blasted the pagan despair into nothingness. There is meaning to human life beyond what happens to us in our 4 score years on Earth. There is a reason for our transcendant longings that death can no longer make a mockery of. Considering this the resurrection should be celebrated with great intensity. The veil of the temple is rent, revealing the nature of the God who brought forth our salvation. This was revolutionary in ancient times. Nothing like this had been proclaimed before.

Western Amnesia

But in its amnesia Western civilization seems to be forgetting that more and more. It is increasingly going back to the despair it had during the pagan Roman empire. Death was so taken for granted in those days that death was used for entertainment during the gladiatorial games. We don’t have that now, not real death anyway. We do it digitally now what with increasingly graphic video games. Then of course there is the film industry and its slasher films.

Our Lord Forgotten

It seems the crowd no longer wants to crucify our Lord anymore, but just ignore Him and pass Him by.

The West has largely forgotten our Lord. It has forgotten the good news that the resurrection brought forth. The joy of life that the resurrection made possible is receding from our memory. In its zeal to form a society that won’t tyrannise people for their beliefs it departing from the very basis for believing in the worth of all people and the brotherhood of humanity. When the West forgets the Christian world view completely, what then will it base its moral structure if not Christ the King?

Thanksgiving Reflection

I have been thinking about the Thanksgiving holiday lately. It is remarkable that this holiday does not involve buying and receiving presents or going out one night and getting free candy of having barbeques and watching fireworks or hunting for colored eggs. Until recent years there was not much decorating either. Other than the buying food there is not much of a commercial aspect to the day.

Instead it is a day when families get together and share arguably the biggest meal of the year and reflect on what they are thankful for. It is an indication that the best aspects of people in this country have not been smothered by the hyper consumerism of American culture.

We may do well to reflect on the roots of Thanksgiving observance in this country. When the Pilgrims had their feast in 1621 they were following an ancient Anglo -Saxon custom of having a feast after a successful harvest. This was called the Harvest Home festival. This involved days of feasting and games. This was in thanks giving to the gods (or God after converting to Christianity) for insuring their survival for another year.

So when the Pilgrims went through a terrible winter and had a successful crop they followed this custom. So many of the aspects of this American holiday harken back to old European customs. It is hard for us to appreciate what they felt in those days and the gratitude they felt for a bountiful harvest. The Pilgrims could have easily starved if the crops did not grow and even in Europe famine was not uncommon if harvests failed! Then there was the threat of plague and the possibility of death even from a cold. It seemed that death could take them at any time and in many ways.

They lived with these threats constantly. It seems that we in Western civilization can’t fully appreciate how precarious life was then. We run out of food we just go to the local supermarket and complain about having to haul too many bags up the stairs. We catch a cold and take some Nyquil and call in sick the next morning. It seems we have lost a bit of that appreciation for life because it doesn’t seem that precarious now.

Or is that an illusion?

I think so. Maybe we don’t have the threat of starvation these days nor will we die from a cold but we do have plenty of other diseases such as cancer to kill us. Tornados, earthquakes, or hurricanes can strike at any time. We have car accidents and heart attacks and even the threat of terrorist threats that shatter any illusion we have that we have complete control over our life situation. Death or other calamities can still take us at any time, they just take different forms.
There are many who are firmly anchored to Truth who are fully aware that this vision Western society has of prosperity and power over nature is an illusion. Perhaps Thanksgiving celebration is an indication that many more sense it deep down. They give thanks because they intuit that they are contingent beings who don’t have power over either over nature nor the circumstances of there lives. This may be the only time of the year that many would openly thank God for their blessings but still, it would seem that they sense something of the dependence we as creatures have on the Creator. When we thank Him we acknowledge that we are not gods that can bend reality to our will but are beings that have a need to connect to Him who is the source of our existence.

At the end of the day that is what it really comes down to, thanking God for the love He bestows upon us by granting us our very existence. After that everything else is just gravy. We will do well to think on this at Thanksgiving. Despite our increased technology life is still precarious and thus we still have a sense of how precious the Pilgrims and other people in history regarded the life they lived and how they believed that it depended on something greater then themselves. . Also, when we enjoy the food ,family and fun these things also point to that which is greater than ourselves.

It isn’t that God needs our thanks. He doesn’t. It is we who need to thank Him, in order to order our thoughts and our being to the Divine and thus bring human nature to where it should be. It is in this that we find the true purpose of Thanksgiving.