March 29, 2024 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, bestselling author Ace Collins is here to reveal the events and backgrounds that shaped the best-loved customs of Easter, introducing you to stories you’ve never heard and a deeper appreciation for the holiday’s familiar hallmarks.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
The treasured traditions of Easter. Little bunnies, parades, new Easter outfits,
sunrise services, passion plays, and so much more infuse our
celebration of the season with meaning and glowing memories. Best
(00:33):
Selling author Ace Collins is here to reveal the events
and backgrounds that shape the best loved customs of Easter,
introducing you to stories you've never heard in a deeper
appreciation for the holidays familiar hallmarks. Here's best selling author
Ace Collins.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Of all of the holidays that we celebrate here in
the United States, there's no doubt that Easter is the
oldest holiday. It may not be the oldest official holiday
as far as our calendar goes, but of people who
have celebrated Easter, it goes back to the very first
Easter when people celebrated Christ being risen, when they met
the risen Christ. And for the first or generation or
(01:15):
two after that, they would get together and visit about
what happened on that day and talk to people who
actually saw a risen Christ, who actually saw the crucifixion
or knew Christ when he walked the earth. And in
that sense, it was a very very personal holiday as
opposed to something that had traditions. And you did this
(01:37):
on day you got up on before the sun came
up and went out to the cross that you had
displayed somewhere. It was an opportunity to visit with people
who were their first hand, who knew Jesus. And therefore
it wasn't as much a holiday, if you will, is
it was more of a reunion of people gathering to
(01:58):
talk about why to them were current events recent current events.
It's like, probably not much different than visiting with grandparents
who may have remembered Pearl Harbor as a little kid,
and therefore going what was your impressions, how did you
find out, what did you see.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
What did you know?
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Or if you are black, talking to somebody who knew
Rosa Parks or Jackie Robinson and were there when that happened.
So initially it was very much a religious holiday, but
it was also a holiday where people talked about historical
event that had reshaped history and when the persecutions were
going on and things like that. It was that remembrance
(02:41):
of that holiday that gave these people the courage to
embrace faith in a very open fashion, no matter what
the consequences were. You were being sought out, you were
trying to be quieted, you were trying to be controlled,
and yet you weren't. So Easter therefore became a gathering
(03:02):
of those people, sometimes in secret, after Christ's death and resurrection,
so that they could actually celebrate Easter. When you look
at the holiday and as it evolved, it evolved and
grew after the fall of the Roman Empire to where
churches met on specific days, and that was hooked in
to pass Over, by the way, and it's so complicated,
(03:23):
we're not going to even get into how we determine.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
When Easter is every year.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I wish it was set on one holiday, but because
Passover moves, it moves as well. But they understood it
really well back in the Dark Ages, in Middle Ages,
knew what was going to happen, and it was a
day to look forward to for a couple of different reasons. One,
it was a special day of church celebrations. It was
a special day of gathering. There were people that you
(03:49):
may have seen only once or twice a year that
you got to see at Easter. Secondly, winter was ending,
spring was beginning, and winter was harsh in many of
the areas. Dos and Catholic Easters were celebrated in the
Dark Ages and Middle Ages, and therefore a chance to
get out of your house for maybe the first time,
(04:09):
to see others, to visit with people, and a chance
for children to kind of celebrate having an opportunity for
the winter to go away and to promise the spring
to be there. When Martin Luther nailed his Document to
the Wall, Easter changed a little bit because a lot
of Protestant groups looked at Easter and its association with
(04:33):
pagan rituals and kind of threw it out. I mean,
the Catholic still celebrated Easter, but in the United States
and Great Britain, Easter was pretty much frowned upon until
the eighteen hundreds. And the eighteen hundred saw resurgence of
Easter in Protestant churches throughout Europe and the United States,
(04:54):
and a growth of Easter celebrated as an opportunity people
together in a church and remember much as those early
Christians did. Easter has both a historical event and Easter
as a transformation event in people's lives. And I think
Easter therefore exists because of a transformation, a transformation experience
(05:21):
of a man who was supposedly dead rising from the
grave and taking on a new presence. And two a
transformation of individuals who accepted that faith and therefore had
their lives and in particularly their point of view trans
formed as they went about what they did on earth.
And that's the transformation it's supposed to you, knowing Christ
(05:43):
is supposed to change you. Easter became an opportunity for
people to celebrate that transformation.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
And you've been listening to Ace Collins tell the story
of Easter. And by the way, his book is called
Stories Behind the Traditions and Songs of Easter, and that's
available at local bookstores or wherever you buy your books.
And my goodness, what a way to think about Easter
and that very first Easter celebration, because it wasn't really
(06:11):
a celebration, as Ace points out, it's a reunion. These
people were actually there, and what a thing to have seen.
And by the way, the persecution they were going to
face from having seen it and were sharing it and
were transformed by that experience themselves as they became believers
and Christians. And by the way, the oldest oldest a
(06:34):
holiday is Passover itself. Three thousand years plus Jews have
been celebrating that sacred day.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
When we come back.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
More of this remarkable storytelling the story of Easter, the
story of transformation, not only of the world, but of
billions of people who call themselves Christians. Here on our
American Stories, Liehbibe here the host of All American Stories.
(07:35):
Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from
across this great country, stories from our big cities and
small towns. But we truly can't do the show without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love what you hear, go
to Alamerican Stories dot com and click the donate button.
Give a little, give a lot. Go to Alamerican Stories
(07:57):
dot com and give And we continue with our American
Stories and with Ace Collins telling the story of Easter.
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
If you looked at the word Christmas, it means worship christ.
I mean there is no doubt that it is Christian
in its origin. If you look at Easter, Easter is
a derivative of a goddess of fertility named Ostra Eostra
e Austere several different pronunciations in the United States, but
we most typically pronounced it Ostra, and Ostra was a
(08:44):
goddess who looked like a rabbit, by the way, had
certain rabbit features. And before there was missionaries arrived in Europe,
Ostra was looked upon as this magical goddess who basically
ended winter and brought forth spring, and it was a
celebration of spring. Early missionaries seized upon this and used
(09:06):
the celebration of Ostra as a celebration of the resurrection
because Easter was celebrated in the spring as well, and
as people converted to Christianity, they brought Ostra's feelings with them. Well,
they brought that elements of the holiday, some of the
things they celebrated, some of the ways they dressed. We'll
talk about eggs here in a little bit, but that
(09:26):
became a part of the Christmas celebration of the church,
and the Protestants during Reformation looked upon those things as
being outside of the Bible. They were brought in later
they had connections with things that were not Christian, and
so what they did was anything that they found that
(09:47):
looked as if you could not trace it to the
New Testament. They tossed out. And so they even tried
to toss out the word Easter, which missionaries had kind
of developed into this celebration of Oaster and transformed that
into the resurrection of Christ. They even really didn't even
(10:08):
use the word Easter very much. The Catholics continued to
use it, but the Protestants didn't, and so therefore there
became a split in the church that was along the
lines of Catholic and Protestant whether Easter should be celebrated
or it should just be a Sunday in which you
talked about the resurrection of Christ. And so it really
(10:30):
wasn't a holiday to many people who were Protestants up
until about eighteen forty eighteen fifty, about the same time
people who were in the Protestant movement started celebrating Christmas.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
It's really funny because.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
We as people need structure, so therefore everything has to
be organized, there has to be a plan, and what
you had was all these different celebrations, embracing all these
different things all over. It happened with Christmas. Christmas was
celebrated before they decided in the third century to have
Christmas on December twenty fifth. Christmas was celebrated all kinds
(11:04):
of times of the year. Nobody had a set day
for Christmas, and I Easter had a lot of those
same issues because there wasn't a historic date in which
they could point to where Christ was crucified. So they
looked at all those things, and in thirty twenty five
is about the same time that four years later they
determined that when Christmas was going to exist, you were
(11:26):
having to establish some type of situation in the church
where everybody was celebrating holidays at the same time. Hence,
the church councils determined, here is the date it's going
to happen, once again tied to the lunar cycles after
the passover.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
And so it's a complicated system.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
You can sit there and read about it, you can
google it, you can figure out how they set those dates,
and then I guarantee you ten minutes later you're going
to be totally lost and forget about it. But the
important thing to know is they established during that time
at least a set Sunday when Easter would be celebrated,
a set Friday for Good Friday, and there you at
(12:08):
least had people celebrating the holiday at the same time,
as opposed to you might have in towns one church
celebrating it one day and then five months later another
church celebrating it. So in that sense, I think the
only modern thing you can tie it to is in
(12:28):
the seventeen hundreds when everybody in Europe and throughout the
world went on the same calendar. Before that, there were
three or four different calendars, and there was a Georgian calendar, calendar,
a Julian calendar, and all these people were celebrating times
and dates at other times. Eventually, with the advent of railroads,
(12:48):
you had to have a standard time frame across the
United States for trains. It was the same kind of thing.
It was not as much spiritual as it was logical.
We got to get a handle on when we can
do this and coordinated and so historically, does it have
anything to do with when Jesus was crucified.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
We don't know that.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
So it's just a rudimentary time that's tied with Passover,
the celebration of Passover. That came to a point when
this is when we celebrate Easter, this is when we
celebrate the resurrection. By the way, if you want to
know how confusing all that must have been at the time,
you just simply look at George Washington, who everybody celebrates
(13:27):
his birthday on February twenty second, but the calendar changed
after he was born, so technically he was born according
to the new calendar on February twelfth of a different year.
So you know that must have been confusing at that
particular point. Well, we've celebrated Easter this way forever, and
now suddenly you're telling us we have to celebrate it
here and that time, and so it probably took a
(13:51):
while for people to accept that edict and hold to it.
When you started celebrating eastercase, because it's Spring and that's
when Ostra's birthday and the rebirth of Spring was celebrated.
People obviously had issues with that. When they looked at
the way that people were bringing in some of the
(14:13):
pagan rituals to the church, they had strong issues with that.
And so there was a fundamentalist movement at that time
that said, okay, here's what we can do. We can
read a certain chapter in the Bible, we can dress
a certain way, we can sing certain songs, we can
meet at certain times, but we will not go beyond that.
(14:37):
And so there is so much of the Christian heritage,
though that is tied to things that didn't celebrate the
Resurrection that did happen on Easter, that eventually, even in
the eighteen hundreds, people went back and embraced them, particularly
in the United States and England where they had been ignored.
(14:58):
It's difficult to commerci something that moves. But I still
think it has more to do with the fact that
whereas Christmas went out, jumped outside the realm of being
a religious holiday. And many ways, Christmas is a holiday
that is religious for a certain select group, but Christmas
(15:18):
is also a holiday in non Christian countries around the world, Japan,
China and others that don't have a majority of Christmas
of Christian populations. There was an opportunity in the commercialation
of Christmas was much more successful. Therefore it became a
universal holiday. If you would Thanks much more like Thanksgiving.
(15:39):
But Easter has retained its specific Christian roots and the
purpose of Easter, even with the addition of the Easter
Buddy and other things and making it somewhat childlike for children.
In certain ways. This focus is still on the resurrection,
and I think that's what makes it unique. Eggs have
(16:03):
been an important part of mystical elements of life forever.
I mean the Egyptians would actually put eggs into sarcophaguses
and would put.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Them into tombs. Egg was seen as the beginning of life.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
And you've been listening to Ace Collins tell the story
of Easter, and by the way, you can get his
book stories behind the Traditions and songs of Easter by
going to your local bookstore or hitting Amazon or the
usual digital suspects. And what an interesting story he's telling
that of the sort of Pagans start to this, the
(16:42):
secular start, early missionaries using Ostra, this goddess that looked
like a rabbit that symbolized the end of winter and
the beginning of spring, and the early missionaries using that
as a selling opportunity, as a natural opportunity to get
in there and evangelize. And then of course comes to
the religious divide. Some Protestants didn't like it, Catholics did,
(17:04):
and ultimately even Protestants started to war over this. And
it wasn't until the eighteen forties or fifties that America
itself settled in on this notion of Easter without battle
lines being drawn amongst the various and multiple Christian religious
denominations in this great country.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
When we come.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Back more of the story of Easter, a big story,
a big American story, and a big international story. Here
on our American stories, and we continue with our American
(18:10):
stories and with Ace Collins telling the story of Easter.
Let's pick up where Ace last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
The Egyptians actually believed that the world began when an
egg was broken, and the yellow part of the egg
became the sun, the rest became the sustenance of the world.
And so eggs have been important in every culture because
eggs represent birth. And in that respect, there is very
little that you can point to at Easter that probably
(18:43):
better represents new birth for Christians than an egg. Now,
it was tied so much to fertility, gods and other
things growing up that Christians probably you know, fought embracing
the egg to begin with.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
But it was easy to take.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
An egg if you were a missionary and use it
as a track and say, Okay, this represents Christ. This
represents the new birth you can have in Christ. This
represents your life. You have been reborn, and we don't
use the term reborn much anymore, but it was a
common term that was re used back then, and so
you can understand.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Why they would want the egg to go.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
That we talked earlier about Ostra, the god of fertility,
egg was her symbol as well. And the mere fact
that Easter kind of got named after the celebration of Ostra.
And they changed and as people became Christians, they celebrated
Easter at about the same time as the celebration of
(19:45):
Ostra was the celebration of spring, the celebration of the
rebirth of life, and that's when eggs are laid. So
I mean you also had the situation where the timing
was perfect for eggs to be a part of the celebration.
The interesting thing about it is how well the early
Church did in giving meaning to that. They recognized a
(20:05):
tradition that was a part of the Dark Ages, because
eggs was the sustenances of so many people, and they
would go out and gather eggs, and it was a
child's job to gather the eggs. They would gather the
eggs in a bonnet they wore or something and bring
them back and that was what the households would eat
that day and cook with that day. And if a child,
(20:27):
and by the way, they just weren't chicken eggs or
pheas and eggs, any kind of eggs would do.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
And usually there was a tradition if.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
A child brought back a really colorful egg, like a
robin's egg, then they got a special prize. And at
Easter they started, because it was in spring, they started
gathering eggs after church services in meadows. Now they didn't
hide eggs, eggs were just there, and so children would
(20:54):
go out and find eggs.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Well.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Eventually the priest, who looked at this old true that
had nothing to do with Christianity, figured out, you know,
we could take these eggs. We can color these eggs
different colors. Children can find them and they can bring
them back, and we can give them a prize for
gathering the most eggs. But they also have to tell
us what the various colors mean on the eggs. The
(21:18):
color red meant the blood of Christ shed, the blue
was for love, the yellow was for eternal life and
the light that came into the world with Christ, and
green also represented eternal life. You also had colors like
purple that represented the royalty of Christ. So they would
(21:39):
color eggs various colors, and then the children would have
to explain what those colors were. Now, this was a
time when people didn't read much. Very few people could read.
Services were in languages they didn't understand Latin most often,
and so this was the foundation, if you will, for
theological growth. And eventually they started artists started coloring eggs
(22:05):
with scenes from the Bible, like a shepherd or a
wise man, or Jesus or a possible or the parting
of the Red Sea. And when a child found those
eggs and they would see that image, they would have
to come back and tell the people what that meant,
and they would actually have to act out a scene
(22:26):
from the Bible. And therefore eggs became teaching tools. And
so here was an ancient custom that had nothing to
do with Christianity that was transformed into being a very
important teaching tool or teaching aid, if you will, in
the Dark Ages, in the Middle Ages, for the Christian Church.
And coloring Easter eggs therefore, actually is a Christian tradition,
(22:48):
even though the egg itself was born outside of that.
It morphed into having so many things spun off of it.
One of the most interesting things is that they hid
so many different eggs that you could no longer carry
one enough in a bonnet. You would break them, or
a hat if you were a young man. And so
(23:11):
they develop baskets. They started weeding baskets. They had the
one purpose of gathering eggs at Easter, and they would
be used each and every year. And those baskets initially
looked like nests. Eventually they put handles on them and
people would carry the baskets. The children would cary the baskets,
and that where they could gather more eggs and have
more fun. And that is still an important part of
(23:32):
Easter today, even though a lot of the eggs we
find now that we hide our plastic eggs with things
inside them. Interesting point here, the rabbit, which has nothing
to do with Easter, became an important Easter tradition because
there were so many rabbits in Europe that children hunting
(23:53):
for Easter eggs would scare rabbits when they would hunt
for Easter eggs, and they would go to that spot
and often find an egg that a member of the
congregation had hid for them. And little children started telling
other little children that it was the rabbits that laid
the eggs, and therefore the Easter bunny came into fruition
(24:16):
through just a rabbit being at the right place at
the right time. And in Germany, some artisans who made
candy started making chocolate Easter rabbits that were given as
treats at Easter, and that opened up the door for
the rabbit to play into Easter as well. Also, if
(24:38):
you go back and look at it, Oastra had rabbit
like features, and supposedly a bird that admired her so
much and came to visit her was so transformed by
her rabbit like beauty that the bird asked to be
transformed into a bunny. And that particular bunny legends could
lay eggs as opposed to normal bunnies could not. And
(25:00):
whether that ties into how the bunny became a part
of Easter, we don't.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Know, but.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Sometime books were written. Peter Cottontail became a monster hit
you know, several generations ago for little kids. And then
dog Gonett, the man who gave us two of the
great Christmas songs, Gene Autrey who gave us Rudolph and
gave us here Comes Santa Claus in nineteen fifty recorded
(25:27):
a song about here comes Peter Cottontail that became a
Megan selling record. And Gene who gave us Rudolph, also
gave us the bunny being fully associated with the Easter holidays.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
And you've been listening to Ace Collins tell the story
of Easter, and Ace also did this for us for
the story of Christmas. And you can go to our
American Stories and go in the search bar and type
in his name Ace Collins. He does this as well
as anybody out there writing about the things we think
we know and do know, but don't know the full
(26:01):
story behind how they came to be. My goodness, I'm
learning just about the tradition of eggs and in the
Middle Ages, why we got the colors and the coloring
of eggs that we do well without thinking about it
now moreover, the painting of eggs. What an interesting idea,
and all of it to teach what were essentially mostly
illiterate masses who didn't understand the church teachings that were
(26:26):
mostly in Latin at the time, and thus the beginning
of a tradition that we all love. So many Americans
love and practice today, and when we come back, more
of the remarkable storytelling of Ace Collins. His book Stories
Behind the Traditions and Songs of Easter is available in
(26:47):
bookstores or anywhere else you get books. Again, when we return,
more of the story of Easter. Here on our American Stories.
(27:37):
And we're back with our American stories and the story
of Easter is told by Ace Collins. Let's pick up
again where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
By the way, I we'll tell you this, in the
eighteen forties, fifties, and sixties, people were already dressing up
like bunnies to sell stuff in stores. So it is
a tradition in the United States that goes back at
least that far. And there a bunny in the eighteen
sixties that the Easter egg rolls at the White House.
With Abraham Lincoln when he began the Easter egg hunts
(28:08):
at the White House, there was a bunny there that
was helping the kids find those eggs at those first
Easter hunts on the.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
White House lawn.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
When you look at the American traditions, the Easter bunny
has become so important. And it's that way in England
as well in the UK that about ninety percent of
people who celebrate Easter have an Easter Bunny as a
part of their celebration. Even if they're Christians, they still
use the Easter Bunny to bring a little bit of
the childlike feeling and lore to it.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
It has.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
You know, you could actually trace Santa Claus's roots to
Saint Nicholas of Baria and another great Christian man from
lat Via who we know as King winsl Is.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Today there is no such way you can trace.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
The Easter Bunny's roots that way, and the Easter Bunny
you can't tie into any way or shape the resurrection
or any type of Christian value.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
But the Easter Bunny is.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Kind of a unique childlike symbol of Easter that I
think makes the holiday a bit less serious than it
is otherwise. And if you think about that, that may
be good, because when you talk about the crucifixion and
the horrible crucifixion of an innocent man, that is unsettling.
(29:25):
Resurrection brings hope, but still you have that unsettling element
hanging over it. And therefore, in that way, Easter is
a very adult holiday. It's not the birth of a baby.
It's the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. And I think by
having elements like Easter egg hunts and an Easter bunny,
you at least bring something that might offer some comfort,
(29:48):
some joy, and maybe tampered down a little bit of
the horrific nature of the Crucifixion. And I don't mean
that in a negative sense, because I think the Crucifixion
is very, very important. But I do think that having
a bit of this holiday with some childlike references probably
(30:08):
helps open the door to talking about the real Easter
when children get old enough to fully understand it better,
because they already have something of an Easter, a tradition,
and now you can sit there and say, Okay, here's
what the color of the eggs mean, here's what really happened.
Here is what life has promised to you. This egg
can represent new life, the new life you have when
(30:31):
you fully understand who Christ is. Back in the fifteen
sixteen seventeen hundreds, the Easter egg tree was an important
part of the celebration of Easter, and they would actually
drain they would poke a hole in eggs, drain everything out,
paint them various colors and hang them on trees. And
once again they would talk about the various colors and
(30:53):
what they meant with their children, and the Easter eggs
were the ornaments you And there are still, I know,
still know a few people who have an Easter tree.
It is not a very common celebration, but it is
something that has happened. But once again, I think the
reason we don't do that to as great as the
(31:14):
stint as they did all of those years ago, is
the lack of commercialization of this holiday. I think stories
realized you probably couldn't sell enough Easter decorations to hang
on trees to make it worthwhile, as opposed to Christmas,
where you have all these themed trees and everything else
going on. I still think the lack of commercialization is
due strictly to the point of.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
This.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
You can't take the spiritual nature of Easter away. Ultimately,
at the heart is the resurrection of Christ after the crucifixion,
and therefore it's hopelessness to hope, you know, and it's
darkness to light. And I think those things are so
(31:59):
profound that the traditions that we have with it, while good,
pale in comparison to what the real meaning of a
holiday is. You know, you can argue that the beginning
of life is very important, and it is, and that's
why we celebrate christ birth, and that's why Christmas became
this international holiday, even though it was commercialized into being
(32:22):
a non religious holiday for many. But Easter was the
end and then the new beginning, and I don't find
many ways that you can fully commercialize that. You have
to actually internalize that into something that was spiritual, and
(32:44):
I think that's very important. Now, that doesn't mean that
Christians haven't used Easter in ways that were less than spiritual.
Throughout the eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, in New
York City, there were people who walked up and down
Broadway after church services on Easter Sunday, and they walked
up and down Broadway for one in one own reason
(33:05):
that was to show off their new clothes. And they
were trying to outdo everybody else. So there were elements
that had nothing to do with how we should respond
to each other. They wanted to be judged on how
good they looked that day, and so you wanted to
have the most colorful bondet, you wanted to have the
nicest new suit. You're wanted your kids to look better
than the other kids. And that was essentially the advent
(33:27):
of the Easter parades in the United States. Now in Europe,
Easter parades dated back to the Middle Ages, and those
parades were the stations of the Cross where people would
go and actually retrace what happened the last week of
Christ's life, from home Sunday to the finals the Last Supper,
to betrayal, to crucifixions. Every place you stopped on that
(33:51):
parade portrayed that differently. Many people call it to walk
to a mais now, but that was a part of
the early Christmas parades.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
In America.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
We never really had that as a part of our
Eastern celebration, but we did have parades where we've tried
to show off how good we looked. And so when
you think about the great movie, the Easter Parade movie
with Judy Garland, it was based on that walking up
and down the streets of New York showing off how
good you looked when you just went to church. So
one it was advertising, hey, I went to church on Easter,
(34:26):
and two it was advertising, look how good I looked
going to church on Easter. And that's a unique tradition
that probably has even less connection with the Bible than
the Easter Bunny does. When you look at Easter, you're
looking at a holiday once again, that's deeply spiritual. And
(34:48):
I think the important thing that we all need to
remember is that whether you call it Easter or a
resurrection Sunday, it is a time of.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Reflection, a time of hope.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
And I think it's a time that we need to
realize that the people who knew Jesus spent three days
scared the death and hiding until they saw him resurrected.
And when they saw the resid directed Christ, it gave
them the faith, so much faith that they lived the
rest of their lives spreading that message. And except for
(35:25):
one of those eleven who did not portray him, you
know Judas portraying, the other eleven didn't, they were persecuted,
they lost their lives for that faith. I think John
was the only one who managed to live a full life.
And I don't think and I tell kids this all
the time, I don't think these people would have died
(35:47):
for a lie. They saw Christ, they saw the resurrected Christ,
and they died telling that message. And I think of
if there's a message that we need to latch onto Easter.
The resurrection is these people saw it and they were
willing to live for it, and they were willing to
die for it.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
And a terrific job on the production by Greg Hengler.
And a special thanks once again to Ace Collins his
book Stories Behind the Traditions and Songs of Easter.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
It's a must.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Get read it with your family, share it with your family.
And by the way, his Hour on Christmas is just
as good. And you can go to our American Stories
dot com and you can plug in Ace Collins' name
on the search bar and you'll be able to listen
to that with you and your family as well.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
And it's so true.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
As a said, Easter is a time of reflection and hope,
and it was fascinating listening to him describe why Easter
and the Easter eggs and the bunnies and all of
those traditions are so important and it's essentially true. This
is a very difficult celebration and the crucifixion is rough.
(37:02):
Kids are ready when they're ready for such things, and
families know this, and it's why we use the bunnies
and why we use the eggs. Three year olds aren't
ready for the full story of the Crucifixion. It's a
rough story, but it's a great introduction. It's a great
way to ease families in to the story of what
happened on the day of the Crucifixion and three days
(37:23):
later the resurrection. A terrific job, as always by Ace
telling these stories, these sacred stories, and also these secular stories.
There are many people in this country who manage to
somehow celebrate Easter and are not Christian. The story of
Easter here on our American story. The bold built to
(38:08):
find
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
The treasured traditions of Easter. Little bunnies, parades, new Easter outfits,
sunrise services, passion plays, and so much more infuse our
celebration of the season with meaning and glowing memories. Best
(00:33):
Selling author Ace Collins is here to reveal the events
and backgrounds that shape the best loved customs of Easter,
introducing you to stories you've never heard in a deeper
appreciation for the holidays familiar hallmarks. Here's best selling author
Ace Collins.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Of all of the holidays that we celebrate here in
the United States, there's no doubt that Easter is the
oldest holiday. It may not be the oldest official holiday
as far as our calendar goes, but of people who
have celebrated Easter, it goes back to the very first
Easter when people celebrated Christ being risen, when they met
the risen Christ. And for the first or generation or
(01:15):
two after that, they would get together and visit about
what happened on that day and talk to people who
actually saw a risen Christ, who actually saw the crucifixion
or knew Christ when he walked the earth. And in
that sense, it was a very very personal holiday as
opposed to something that had traditions. And you did this
(01:37):
on day you got up on before the sun came
up and went out to the cross that you had
displayed somewhere. It was an opportunity to visit with people
who were their first hand, who knew Jesus. And therefore
it wasn't as much a holiday, if you will, is
it was more of a reunion of people gathering to
(01:58):
talk about why to them were current events recent current events.
It's like, probably not much different than visiting with grandparents
who may have remembered Pearl Harbor as a little kid,
and therefore going what was your impressions, how did you
find out, what did you see.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
What did you know?
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Or if you are black, talking to somebody who knew
Rosa Parks or Jackie Robinson and were there when that happened.
So initially it was very much a religious holiday, but
it was also a holiday where people talked about historical
event that had reshaped history and when the persecutions were
going on and things like that. It was that remembrance
(02:41):
of that holiday that gave these people the courage to
embrace faith in a very open fashion, no matter what
the consequences were. You were being sought out, you were
trying to be quieted, you were trying to be controlled,
and yet you weren't. So Easter therefore became a gathering
(03:02):
of those people, sometimes in secret, after Christ's death and resurrection,
so that they could actually celebrate Easter. When you look
at the holiday and as it evolved, it evolved and
grew after the fall of the Roman Empire to where
churches met on specific days, and that was hooked in
to pass Over, by the way, and it's so complicated,
(03:23):
we're not going to even get into how we determine.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
When Easter is every year.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I wish it was set on one holiday, but because
Passover moves, it moves as well. But they understood it
really well back in the Dark Ages, in Middle Ages,
knew what was going to happen, and it was a
day to look forward to for a couple of different reasons. One,
it was a special day of church celebrations. It was
a special day of gathering. There were people that you
(03:49):
may have seen only once or twice a year that
you got to see at Easter. Secondly, winter was ending,
spring was beginning, and winter was harsh in many of
the areas. Dos and Catholic Easters were celebrated in the
Dark Ages and Middle Ages, and therefore a chance to
get out of your house for maybe the first time,
(04:09):
to see others, to visit with people, and a chance
for children to kind of celebrate having an opportunity for
the winter to go away and to promise the spring
to be there. When Martin Luther nailed his Document to
the Wall, Easter changed a little bit because a lot
of Protestant groups looked at Easter and its association with
(04:33):
pagan rituals and kind of threw it out. I mean,
the Catholic still celebrated Easter, but in the United States
and Great Britain, Easter was pretty much frowned upon until
the eighteen hundreds. And the eighteen hundred saw resurgence of
Easter in Protestant churches throughout Europe and the United States,
(04:54):
and a growth of Easter celebrated as an opportunity people
together in a church and remember much as those early
Christians did. Easter has both a historical event and Easter
as a transformation event in people's lives. And I think
Easter therefore exists because of a transformation, a transformation experience
(05:21):
of a man who was supposedly dead rising from the
grave and taking on a new presence. And two a
transformation of individuals who accepted that faith and therefore had
their lives and in particularly their point of view trans
formed as they went about what they did on earth.
And that's the transformation it's supposed to you, knowing Christ
(05:43):
is supposed to change you. Easter became an opportunity for
people to celebrate that transformation.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
And you've been listening to Ace Collins tell the story
of Easter. And by the way, his book is called
Stories Behind the Traditions and Songs of Easter, and that's
available at local bookstores or wherever you buy your books.
And my goodness, what a way to think about Easter
and that very first Easter celebration, because it wasn't really
(06:11):
a celebration, as Ace points out, it's a reunion. These
people were actually there, and what a thing to have seen.
And by the way, the persecution they were going to
face from having seen it and were sharing it and
were transformed by that experience themselves as they became believers
and Christians. And by the way, the oldest oldest a
(06:34):
holiday is Passover itself. Three thousand years plus Jews have
been celebrating that sacred day.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
When we come back.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
More of this remarkable storytelling the story of Easter, the
story of transformation, not only of the world, but of
billions of people who call themselves Christians. Here on our
American Stories, Liehbibe here the host of All American Stories.
(07:35):
Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from
across this great country, stories from our big cities and
small towns. But we truly can't do the show without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love what you hear, go
to Alamerican Stories dot com and click the donate button.
Give a little, give a lot. Go to Alamerican Stories
(07:57):
dot com and give And we continue with our American
Stories and with Ace Collins telling the story of Easter.
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
If you looked at the word Christmas, it means worship christ.
I mean there is no doubt that it is Christian
in its origin. If you look at Easter, Easter is
a derivative of a goddess of fertility named Ostra Eostra
e Austere several different pronunciations in the United States, but
we most typically pronounced it Ostra, and Ostra was a
(08:44):
goddess who looked like a rabbit, by the way, had
certain rabbit features. And before there was missionaries arrived in Europe,
Ostra was looked upon as this magical goddess who basically
ended winter and brought forth spring, and it was a
celebration of spring. Early missionaries seized upon this and used
(09:06):
the celebration of Ostra as a celebration of the resurrection
because Easter was celebrated in the spring as well, and
as people converted to Christianity, they brought Ostra's feelings with them. Well,
they brought that elements of the holiday, some of the
things they celebrated, some of the ways they dressed. We'll
talk about eggs here in a little bit, but that
(09:26):
became a part of the Christmas celebration of the church,
and the Protestants during Reformation looked upon those things as
being outside of the Bible. They were brought in later
they had connections with things that were not Christian, and
so what they did was anything that they found that
(09:47):
looked as if you could not trace it to the
New Testament. They tossed out. And so they even tried
to toss out the word Easter, which missionaries had kind
of developed into this celebration of Oaster and transformed that
into the resurrection of Christ. They even really didn't even
(10:08):
use the word Easter very much. The Catholics continued to
use it, but the Protestants didn't, and so therefore there
became a split in the church that was along the
lines of Catholic and Protestant whether Easter should be celebrated
or it should just be a Sunday in which you
talked about the resurrection of Christ. And so it really
(10:30):
wasn't a holiday to many people who were Protestants up
until about eighteen forty eighteen fifty, about the same time
people who were in the Protestant movement started celebrating Christmas.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
It's really funny because.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
We as people need structure, so therefore everything has to
be organized, there has to be a plan, and what
you had was all these different celebrations, embracing all these
different things all over. It happened with Christmas. Christmas was
celebrated before they decided in the third century to have
Christmas on December twenty fifth. Christmas was celebrated all kinds
(11:04):
of times of the year. Nobody had a set day
for Christmas, and I Easter had a lot of those
same issues because there wasn't a historic date in which
they could point to where Christ was crucified. So they
looked at all those things, and in thirty twenty five
is about the same time that four years later they
determined that when Christmas was going to exist, you were
(11:26):
having to establish some type of situation in the church
where everybody was celebrating holidays at the same time. Hence,
the church councils determined, here is the date it's going
to happen, once again tied to the lunar cycles after
the passover.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
And so it's a complicated system.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
You can sit there and read about it, you can
google it, you can figure out how they set those dates,
and then I guarantee you ten minutes later you're going
to be totally lost and forget about it. But the
important thing to know is they established during that time
at least a set Sunday when Easter would be celebrated,
a set Friday for Good Friday, and there you at
(12:08):
least had people celebrating the holiday at the same time,
as opposed to you might have in towns one church
celebrating it one day and then five months later another
church celebrating it. So in that sense, I think the
only modern thing you can tie it to is in
(12:28):
the seventeen hundreds when everybody in Europe and throughout the
world went on the same calendar. Before that, there were
three or four different calendars, and there was a Georgian calendar, calendar,
a Julian calendar, and all these people were celebrating times
and dates at other times. Eventually, with the advent of railroads,
(12:48):
you had to have a standard time frame across the
United States for trains. It was the same kind of thing.
It was not as much spiritual as it was logical.
We got to get a handle on when we can
do this and coordinated and so historically, does it have
anything to do with when Jesus was crucified.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
We don't know that.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
So it's just a rudimentary time that's tied with Passover,
the celebration of Passover. That came to a point when
this is when we celebrate Easter, this is when we
celebrate the resurrection. By the way, if you want to
know how confusing all that must have been at the time,
you just simply look at George Washington, who everybody celebrates
(13:27):
his birthday on February twenty second, but the calendar changed
after he was born, so technically he was born according
to the new calendar on February twelfth of a different year.
So you know that must have been confusing at that
particular point. Well, we've celebrated Easter this way forever, and
now suddenly you're telling us we have to celebrate it
here and that time, and so it probably took a
(13:51):
while for people to accept that edict and hold to it.
When you started celebrating eastercase, because it's Spring and that's
when Ostra's birthday and the rebirth of Spring was celebrated.
People obviously had issues with that. When they looked at
the way that people were bringing in some of the
(14:13):
pagan rituals to the church, they had strong issues with that.
And so there was a fundamentalist movement at that time
that said, okay, here's what we can do. We can
read a certain chapter in the Bible, we can dress
a certain way, we can sing certain songs, we can
meet at certain times, but we will not go beyond that.
(14:37):
And so there is so much of the Christian heritage,
though that is tied to things that didn't celebrate the
Resurrection that did happen on Easter, that eventually, even in
the eighteen hundreds, people went back and embraced them, particularly
in the United States and England where they had been ignored.
(14:58):
It's difficult to commerci something that moves. But I still
think it has more to do with the fact that
whereas Christmas went out, jumped outside the realm of being
a religious holiday. And many ways, Christmas is a holiday
that is religious for a certain select group, but Christmas
(15:18):
is also a holiday in non Christian countries around the world, Japan,
China and others that don't have a majority of Christmas
of Christian populations. There was an opportunity in the commercialation
of Christmas was much more successful. Therefore it became a
universal holiday. If you would Thanks much more like Thanksgiving.
(15:39):
But Easter has retained its specific Christian roots and the
purpose of Easter, even with the addition of the Easter
Buddy and other things and making it somewhat childlike for children.
In certain ways. This focus is still on the resurrection,
and I think that's what makes it unique. Eggs have
(16:03):
been an important part of mystical elements of life forever.
I mean the Egyptians would actually put eggs into sarcophaguses
and would put.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Them into tombs. Egg was seen as the beginning of life.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
And you've been listening to Ace Collins tell the story
of Easter, and by the way, you can get his
book stories behind the Traditions and songs of Easter by
going to your local bookstore or hitting Amazon or the
usual digital suspects. And what an interesting story he's telling
that of the sort of Pagans start to this, the
(16:42):
secular start, early missionaries using Ostra, this goddess that looked
like a rabbit that symbolized the end of winter and
the beginning of spring, and the early missionaries using that
as a selling opportunity, as a natural opportunity to get
in there and evangelize. And then of course comes to
the religious divide. Some Protestants didn't like it, Catholics did,
(17:04):
and ultimately even Protestants started to war over this. And
it wasn't until the eighteen forties or fifties that America
itself settled in on this notion of Easter without battle
lines being drawn amongst the various and multiple Christian religious
denominations in this great country.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
When we come.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Back more of the story of Easter, a big story,
a big American story, and a big international story. Here
on our American stories, and we continue with our American
(18:10):
stories and with Ace Collins telling the story of Easter.
Let's pick up where Ace last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
The Egyptians actually believed that the world began when an
egg was broken, and the yellow part of the egg
became the sun, the rest became the sustenance of the world.
And so eggs have been important in every culture because
eggs represent birth. And in that respect, there is very
little that you can point to at Easter that probably
(18:43):
better represents new birth for Christians than an egg. Now,
it was tied so much to fertility, gods and other
things growing up that Christians probably you know, fought embracing
the egg to begin with.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
But it was easy to take.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
An egg if you were a missionary and use it
as a track and say, Okay, this represents Christ. This
represents the new birth you can have in Christ. This
represents your life. You have been reborn, and we don't
use the term reborn much anymore, but it was a
common term that was re used back then, and so
you can understand.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Why they would want the egg to go.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
That we talked earlier about Ostra, the god of fertility,
egg was her symbol as well. And the mere fact
that Easter kind of got named after the celebration of Ostra.
And they changed and as people became Christians, they celebrated
Easter at about the same time as the celebration of
(19:45):
Ostra was the celebration of spring, the celebration of the
rebirth of life, and that's when eggs are laid. So
I mean you also had the situation where the timing
was perfect for eggs to be a part of the celebration.
The interesting thing about it is how well the early
Church did in giving meaning to that. They recognized a
(20:05):
tradition that was a part of the Dark Ages, because
eggs was the sustenances of so many people, and they
would go out and gather eggs, and it was a
child's job to gather the eggs. They would gather the
eggs in a bonnet they wore or something and bring
them back and that was what the households would eat
that day and cook with that day. And if a child,
(20:27):
and by the way, they just weren't chicken eggs or
pheas and eggs, any kind of eggs would do.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
And usually there was a tradition if.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
A child brought back a really colorful egg, like a
robin's egg, then they got a special prize. And at
Easter they started, because it was in spring, they started
gathering eggs after church services in meadows. Now they didn't
hide eggs, eggs were just there, and so children would
(20:54):
go out and find eggs.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Well.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Eventually the priest, who looked at this old true that
had nothing to do with Christianity, figured out, you know,
we could take these eggs. We can color these eggs
different colors. Children can find them and they can bring
them back, and we can give them a prize for
gathering the most eggs. But they also have to tell
us what the various colors mean on the eggs. The
(21:18):
color red meant the blood of Christ shed, the blue
was for love, the yellow was for eternal life and
the light that came into the world with Christ, and
green also represented eternal life. You also had colors like
purple that represented the royalty of Christ. So they would
(21:39):
color eggs various colors, and then the children would have
to explain what those colors were. Now, this was a
time when people didn't read much. Very few people could read.
Services were in languages they didn't understand Latin most often,
and so this was the foundation, if you will, for
theological growth. And eventually they started artists started coloring eggs
(22:05):
with scenes from the Bible, like a shepherd or a
wise man, or Jesus or a possible or the parting
of the Red Sea. And when a child found those
eggs and they would see that image, they would have
to come back and tell the people what that meant,
and they would actually have to act out a scene
(22:26):
from the Bible. And therefore eggs became teaching tools. And
so here was an ancient custom that had nothing to
do with Christianity that was transformed into being a very
important teaching tool or teaching aid, if you will, in
the Dark Ages, in the Middle Ages, for the Christian Church.
And coloring Easter eggs therefore, actually is a Christian tradition,
(22:48):
even though the egg itself was born outside of that.
It morphed into having so many things spun off of it.
One of the most interesting things is that they hid
so many different eggs that you could no longer carry
one enough in a bonnet. You would break them, or
a hat if you were a young man. And so
(23:11):
they develop baskets. They started weeding baskets. They had the
one purpose of gathering eggs at Easter, and they would
be used each and every year. And those baskets initially
looked like nests. Eventually they put handles on them and
people would carry the baskets. The children would cary the baskets,
and that where they could gather more eggs and have
more fun. And that is still an important part of
(23:32):
Easter today, even though a lot of the eggs we
find now that we hide our plastic eggs with things
inside them. Interesting point here, the rabbit, which has nothing
to do with Easter, became an important Easter tradition because
there were so many rabbits in Europe that children hunting
(23:53):
for Easter eggs would scare rabbits when they would hunt
for Easter eggs, and they would go to that spot
and often find an egg that a member of the
congregation had hid for them. And little children started telling
other little children that it was the rabbits that laid
the eggs, and therefore the Easter bunny came into fruition
(24:16):
through just a rabbit being at the right place at
the right time. And in Germany, some artisans who made
candy started making chocolate Easter rabbits that were given as
treats at Easter, and that opened up the door for
the rabbit to play into Easter as well. Also, if
(24:38):
you go back and look at it, Oastra had rabbit
like features, and supposedly a bird that admired her so
much and came to visit her was so transformed by
her rabbit like beauty that the bird asked to be
transformed into a bunny. And that particular bunny legends could
lay eggs as opposed to normal bunnies could not. And
(25:00):
whether that ties into how the bunny became a part
of Easter, we don't.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Know, but.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Sometime books were written. Peter Cottontail became a monster hit
you know, several generations ago for little kids. And then
dog Gonett, the man who gave us two of the
great Christmas songs, Gene Autrey who gave us Rudolph and
gave us here Comes Santa Claus in nineteen fifty recorded
(25:27):
a song about here comes Peter Cottontail that became a
Megan selling record. And Gene who gave us Rudolph, also
gave us the bunny being fully associated with the Easter holidays.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
And you've been listening to Ace Collins tell the story
of Easter, and Ace also did this for us for
the story of Christmas. And you can go to our
American Stories and go in the search bar and type
in his name Ace Collins. He does this as well
as anybody out there writing about the things we think
we know and do know, but don't know the full
(26:01):
story behind how they came to be. My goodness, I'm
learning just about the tradition of eggs and in the
Middle Ages, why we got the colors and the coloring
of eggs that we do well without thinking about it
now moreover, the painting of eggs. What an interesting idea,
and all of it to teach what were essentially mostly
illiterate masses who didn't understand the church teachings that were
(26:26):
mostly in Latin at the time, and thus the beginning
of a tradition that we all love. So many Americans
love and practice today, and when we come back, more
of the remarkable storytelling of Ace Collins. His book Stories
Behind the Traditions and Songs of Easter is available in
(26:47):
bookstores or anywhere else you get books. Again, when we return,
more of the story of Easter. Here on our American Stories.
(27:37):
And we're back with our American stories and the story
of Easter is told by Ace Collins. Let's pick up
again where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
By the way, I we'll tell you this, in the
eighteen forties, fifties, and sixties, people were already dressing up
like bunnies to sell stuff in stores. So it is
a tradition in the United States that goes back at
least that far. And there a bunny in the eighteen
sixties that the Easter egg rolls at the White House.
With Abraham Lincoln when he began the Easter egg hunts
(28:08):
at the White House, there was a bunny there that
was helping the kids find those eggs at those first
Easter hunts on the.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
White House lawn.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
When you look at the American traditions, the Easter bunny
has become so important. And it's that way in England
as well in the UK that about ninety percent of
people who celebrate Easter have an Easter Bunny as a
part of their celebration. Even if they're Christians, they still
use the Easter Bunny to bring a little bit of
the childlike feeling and lore to it.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
It has.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
You know, you could actually trace Santa Claus's roots to
Saint Nicholas of Baria and another great Christian man from
lat Via who we know as King winsl Is.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Today there is no such way you can trace.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
The Easter Bunny's roots that way, and the Easter Bunny
you can't tie into any way or shape the resurrection
or any type of Christian value.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
But the Easter Bunny is.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Kind of a unique childlike symbol of Easter that I
think makes the holiday a bit less serious than it
is otherwise. And if you think about that, that may
be good, because when you talk about the crucifixion and
the horrible crucifixion of an innocent man, that is unsettling.
(29:25):
Resurrection brings hope, but still you have that unsettling element
hanging over it. And therefore, in that way, Easter is
a very adult holiday. It's not the birth of a baby.
It's the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. And I think by
having elements like Easter egg hunts and an Easter bunny,
you at least bring something that might offer some comfort,
(29:48):
some joy, and maybe tampered down a little bit of
the horrific nature of the Crucifixion. And I don't mean
that in a negative sense, because I think the Crucifixion
is very, very important. But I do think that having
a bit of this holiday with some childlike references probably
(30:08):
helps open the door to talking about the real Easter
when children get old enough to fully understand it better,
because they already have something of an Easter, a tradition,
and now you can sit there and say, Okay, here's
what the color of the eggs mean, here's what really happened.
Here is what life has promised to you. This egg
can represent new life, the new life you have when
(30:31):
you fully understand who Christ is. Back in the fifteen
sixteen seventeen hundreds, the Easter egg tree was an important
part of the celebration of Easter, and they would actually
drain they would poke a hole in eggs, drain everything out,
paint them various colors and hang them on trees. And
once again they would talk about the various colors and
(30:53):
what they meant with their children, and the Easter eggs
were the ornaments you And there are still, I know,
still know a few people who have an Easter tree.
It is not a very common celebration, but it is
something that has happened. But once again, I think the
reason we don't do that to as great as the
(31:14):
stint as they did all of those years ago, is
the lack of commercialization of this holiday. I think stories
realized you probably couldn't sell enough Easter decorations to hang
on trees to make it worthwhile, as opposed to Christmas,
where you have all these themed trees and everything else
going on. I still think the lack of commercialization is
due strictly to the point of.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
This.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
You can't take the spiritual nature of Easter away. Ultimately,
at the heart is the resurrection of Christ after the crucifixion,
and therefore it's hopelessness to hope, you know, and it's
darkness to light. And I think those things are so
(31:59):
profound that the traditions that we have with it, while good,
pale in comparison to what the real meaning of a
holiday is. You know, you can argue that the beginning
of life is very important, and it is, and that's
why we celebrate christ birth, and that's why Christmas became
this international holiday, even though it was commercialized into being
(32:22):
a non religious holiday for many. But Easter was the
end and then the new beginning, and I don't find
many ways that you can fully commercialize that. You have
to actually internalize that into something that was spiritual, and
(32:44):
I think that's very important. Now, that doesn't mean that
Christians haven't used Easter in ways that were less than spiritual.
Throughout the eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, in New
York City, there were people who walked up and down
Broadway after church services on Easter Sunday, and they walked
up and down Broadway for one in one own reason
(33:05):
that was to show off their new clothes. And they
were trying to outdo everybody else. So there were elements
that had nothing to do with how we should respond
to each other. They wanted to be judged on how
good they looked that day, and so you wanted to
have the most colorful bondet, you wanted to have the
nicest new suit. You're wanted your kids to look better
than the other kids. And that was essentially the advent
(33:27):
of the Easter parades in the United States. Now in Europe,
Easter parades dated back to the Middle Ages, and those
parades were the stations of the Cross where people would
go and actually retrace what happened the last week of
Christ's life, from home Sunday to the finals the Last Supper,
to betrayal, to crucifixions. Every place you stopped on that
(33:51):
parade portrayed that differently. Many people call it to walk
to a mais now, but that was a part of
the early Christmas parades.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
In America.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
We never really had that as a part of our
Eastern celebration, but we did have parades where we've tried
to show off how good we looked. And so when
you think about the great movie, the Easter Parade movie
with Judy Garland, it was based on that walking up
and down the streets of New York showing off how
good you looked when you just went to church. So
one it was advertising, hey, I went to church on Easter,
(34:26):
and two it was advertising, look how good I looked
going to church on Easter. And that's a unique tradition
that probably has even less connection with the Bible than
the Easter Bunny does. When you look at Easter, you're
looking at a holiday once again, that's deeply spiritual. And
(34:48):
I think the important thing that we all need to
remember is that whether you call it Easter or a
resurrection Sunday, it is a time of.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Reflection, a time of hope.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
And I think it's a time that we need to
realize that the people who knew Jesus spent three days
scared the death and hiding until they saw him resurrected.
And when they saw the resid directed Christ, it gave
them the faith, so much faith that they lived the
rest of their lives spreading that message. And except for
(35:25):
one of those eleven who did not portray him, you
know Judas portraying, the other eleven didn't, they were persecuted,
they lost their lives for that faith. I think John
was the only one who managed to live a full life.
And I don't think and I tell kids this all
the time, I don't think these people would have died
(35:47):
for a lie. They saw Christ, they saw the resurrected Christ,
and they died telling that message. And I think of
if there's a message that we need to latch onto Easter.
The resurrection is these people saw it and they were
willing to live for it, and they were willing to
die for it.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
And a terrific job on the production by Greg Hengler.
And a special thanks once again to Ace Collins his
book Stories Behind the Traditions and Songs of Easter.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
It's a must.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Get read it with your family, share it with your family.
And by the way, his Hour on Christmas is just
as good. And you can go to our American Stories
dot com and you can plug in Ace Collins' name
on the search bar and you'll be able to listen
to that with you and your family as well.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
And it's so true.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
As a said, Easter is a time of reflection and hope,
and it was fascinating listening to him describe why Easter
and the Easter eggs and the bunnies and all of
those traditions are so important and it's essentially true. This
is a very difficult celebration and the crucifixion is rough.
(37:02):
Kids are ready when they're ready for such things, and
families know this, and it's why we use the bunnies
and why we use the eggs. Three year olds aren't
ready for the full story of the Crucifixion. It's a
rough story, but it's a great introduction. It's a great
way to ease families in to the story of what
happened on the day of the Crucifixion and three days
(37:23):
later the resurrection. A terrific job, as always by Ace
telling these stories, these sacred stories, and also these secular stories.
There are many people in this country who manage to
somehow celebrate Easter and are not Christian. The story of
Easter here on our American story. The bold built to
(38:08):
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