The Rites of Spring

The night before the feast, people slept in caves to relive the sacred burial. Then, sometime before dawn, they emerged from their crypts as if they had been raised from the dead like their divine leader, Jesus Christ.

With the skies still dark, new believers were submerged in pools of blessed water. Their lips and eyes were marked with palm oil as they were baptized into the fold. Torchbearers, chanting choirs and emotional relatives crowded around to share a sacred meal and celebrate their mystical rebirth as adopted children of God.

It was the most joyful, reverent day of the year--Easter Sunday in Emperor Constantine’s era.

Fifteen centuries later, a national newspaper ad shows how times have changed. The picture is a basket filled with jelly beans. Above it are the words, “Does Easter mean beans to your kids?”

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The dangerous journey began when families smeared lamb’s blood on their door posts to ward off God’s avenging angel.

Dressed for travel, they ate their last meal standing ready, then ventured out of slavery in Egypt toward new life in a promised land. Pharaoh’s army was at their heels.

But the Passover Seder--the ritual that commemorates the Israelites’ narrow escape from slavery--seems to have lost some of its meaning too.

What traditionally is a symbolic meal with scripture readings, prayers and hymns can look more like a party with a few prayers.

“Some families’ Seders are becoming just a Passover dinner,” says Rabbi Lee Bycel, dean of Hebrew Union College.

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This is one of the most sacred times of year for Christians and Jews. A time to recall the Bible stories of liberation from slavery or sin. And a time to get closer to God. But down through the years, chocolate bunnies and inflatable matzos have crowded out the religious core. A lot of people can’t even remember what rabbits and eggs have to do with Easter, let alone the details of the Resurrection or flight from Pharaoh.

Hardly anyone would guess that Easter and Passover are the most important holidays of the year, from a religious standpoint.

“We’ve lost the sense of Easter as the high point of the church year,” says Ronald Hock, professor of New Testament at USC.

Easter has been overshadowed in part, he says, because the Christmas story relates to real life.

“It’s just easier to celebrate the birth of a child than the resurrection of a body,” Hock says.

Hanukkah has grown out of proportion too.

“Historically it is a very minor holiday,” Bycel says. “But with Christmas now driven by the economy, we’re seeing it drive Hanukkah too.”

In addition, the springtime holidays don’t lend themselves as easily to commerce. But the sales force keeps trying.

Passover held out the longest. But book stores such as Borders in Los Angeles and Cody Books in Berkeley now pump up their Passover selections with cookbooks, music and huggable bears holding matzo. For bigger spenders, Tiffany is advertising Star of David jewelry at $7,500.

And although Easter caved in to commerce years ago, time was when the bunnies and eggs had a recognizable connection to the sacred themes of the day. “Ask most children what the Easter bunny represents, and they couldn’t tell you,” says Patrick Polk, archivist for the department of folklore and mythology at UCLA.

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Long before Christ was born, pagans celebrated the rites of spring.

“Easter is all about renewal--from death to life, from winter to spring,” says Alan Dundes, professor of anthropology and folklore at UC Berkeley. “That makes it a good time for Jesus to be resurrected.”

Rather than ignore the existing pagan festivals, early church fathers chose to superimpose their religious feasts so that the church calendar lined up with the older model, explains Tristram Potter Coffin, a Rhode Island-based folklorist and author.

Bunnies and eggs relate to the day because they are fertility symbols. Early Christians borrowed them from earlier cultures as well. Ancient Egyptians considered eggs to be symbols of new life. And a Germanic myth tells the story of Ostera, the fertility goddess who was always escorted by a rabbit. Now, the rabbit brings the eggs at Easter.

If these images don’t seem remotely religious to us today, Polk says, “commercialism is the culprit.”

At the turn of the century, the Industrial Revolution helped separate Easter’s earthy symbols from their sacred aspects.

Mass-produced candy bunnies, colored eggs and spring flowers got separated from their meaning. “All those ancient traditions became a marketing tool,” he says. “And the people looking to make money off the holidays were never interested in the most important thing, the religious part.”

Everything from suburban living to multiculturalism seems to contribute to the fact that people don’t celebrate Easter the way they used to.

In the past 50 years, Easter has paraded toward the end of the pier at a faster pace.

Families stopped celebrating the day together when the children moved out. Then, suburbs began to sprawl.

Hock remembers how he used to attend an Easter service at dawn on a hill overlooking Diamond Bar. “We’d watch the sun rise over acres of undeveloped land,” he says of the United Church of Christ he attends. “But Diamond Bar is so heavily developed now, we dropped our sunrise service.” The view isn’t inspiring anymore.

Sundays in general have lost their religious center. Increasingly, that affects Easter too.

“There are so many other things to do, church is low on the list of excitement,” Hock says. “And, in my family we all run around so much all week, Sunday is a true day of rest. It’s the one day we can stay home.”

Easter draws more people to church than any other religious holiday, except Christmas. And Passover is the holiday most Jews celebrate every year. Still, says world religions scholar Houston Smith, it’s easier to slip through the cracks than it was when everybody in the neighborhood was going to the same house of worship.

“When neighbors and friends are of another religious tradition, you keep your religious culture to yourself,” says Smith, who is based in Berkeley.

Polk sees yet another reason: “In the past 30 years, Christian churches have played down ritual.”

In the Catholic tradition, he explains, Vatican Council II moved the emphasis away from Latin and the formality of High Mass in the mid-1960s. “Now we’re seeing that a lot of what Easter was about was exactly that ritual and pageantry,” Polk says. “Rituals create bonds and they are aesthetically pleasing. We need them.”

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After so many years of dressing down the holiday, some people are beginning to miss the traditions. They are reviving the feast and relearning the meaning behind the Easter and Passover celebrations.

Patti Finkelstein grew up celebrating Passover and attending Easter egg hunts. Then, two years ago, her first child was born.

“My husband and I wanted him to have a Jewish background, and to know what that means,” she says. “Passover is one of the biggest holidays.” This year for the first time, she will hold a Seder at her house. But first, she had to learn how.

She enrolled in a holiday workshop program at Stephen S. Wise Temple, where Melna Katzman teaches. Several weeks before Passover, Katzman and her students held a model Seder, and she explained every custom. She says many of her students have practiced their faith all along but never learned about the true meaning.

Among other customs, she taught them why they stand up during the Seder and lean left as they drink from their glass. “Leaning left is a symbol of the freedom to lounge, or relax,” she says. “As slaves, Jews weren’t allowed that leisure.”

Once people learn the oldest customs, Rabbi Bycel of Hebrew Union College encourages them to introduce new ones. There are now Seder guides with ancient texts and prayers that speak to feminists, social activists, children, people in 12-step recovery programs and others.

People who have celebrated Easter faithfully are also adding new traditions. A number of churches now hold Seders during Holy Week.

“That’s what Christ did when he was on Earth,” says the Rev. Kirk Smith, rector at St. James Episcopal in Los Angeles. He started the Seder tradition at St. James several years ago as one way to face the jellybean challenge.

At St. John Vianney Catholic Church in Hacienda Heights, Msgr. John Kane watched in wonder three years ago as a new tradition emerged from the people themselves.

“There is a large crucifix in the church, very significant to the community,” he explains. “On Good Friday we took it down from its usual place and processed into the church carrying it. Then, the altar boys and I handed this huge cross to the assembly.

“The people just naturally passed it over their heads. Children, old people, everyone helped pass it along, touching it or kissing it. It was very meaningful for them. When we all share the cross, we can carry it.”

At St. Anthony Greek Orthodox Church in Pasadena, curious neighbors and friends of the congregation crowd in with the regulars for a week of dramatic Easter services.

“We brought our traditions from the old country,” says the Rev. Efstathios Mylonas, whose congregation consists of many second- and third-generation Greek Americans. “Holy week is very dramatic.”

Every Palm Sunday, Mylonas and his altar servers carry palm branches through the church. On Good Friday, parishioners lift a funeral bier that symbolizes Christ’s tomb. And on Easter, midnight service begins in a dark church. Mylonas carries a large candle into the room to symbolize Christ as the light of the world.

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There are “signs of dawn breaking,” says religions scholar Smith.

Our spiritual side is daring to show itself after decades, even centuries, when we kept it hidden. We grew accustomed to letting science explain everything about life. Now, Smith says, science is opening us up again, to our hidden selves. “Quantum mechanics acknowledges that there is something behind space, time and matter,” he says. “That something is spirit.

“This is a very important discovery.”

It wouldn’t shock him to hear that some people are trying to recapture this season’s holy traditions. “We are religious animals,” he believes. “We have a religious gene, and there’s no way we can get rid of it.”