Holy Week Is Prelude to Day of Joy and Hope

Tomorrow, much of Christendom begins the most sacred week on the liturgical calendar. Holy Week activities--which signal the end of the Lenten season--begin on Palm Sunday and conclude on Easter Sunday, a holiday with pagan roots celebrating renewal and resurrection.

On Thursday of Holy Week, some Christians mark their salvation and release from the bondage of sin with a Passover supper. For thousands of years the Jews have observed a parallel custom in a Seder service, which honors the memory of the exodus from Egyptian bondage.

Good Friday recalls the suffering, death and burial of Jesus.

In the Middle Ages and during the Crusades, Christians took license on this dark day to exact revenge by killing non-Christians and especially Jews.

Our Good Friday services would do well to cry out against this injustice and ask God and others for forgiveness for these despicably cruel acts. If Jesus’ death means anything, it means we should love our neighbors as ourselves.

The last three days of Holy Week--Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday--receive special treatment on the church calendar.

They are counted as one long day instead of three individual ones. Some traditions mark this suspension of time by draping the cross with a black cloth on Friday and then with a bright purple one on Sunday.

Various Easter celebrations put the church in complete darkness before midnight on Saturday. As the midnight bells are rung, the church is brilliantly illuminated, representing Christ as the light of the world. In Greek Orthodox churches--where Easter is celebrated a week later--a beautiful procession of people carrying candles solemnly enters the church at midnight as bells peal and the Great Morning Prayer of Easter begins.

As a small girl, I remember spending my midnights before Easter trying to finish my new Easter dress. Mother and I were making identical lavender dotted Swiss dresses on her new electric sewing machine. I had just learned how to use pinking shears and had “pinked” every seam and edge on my dress. After all these years, my strongest memories are how proud I felt on Easter morning when we stepped out wearing our matching dresses. That week we did more than just make dresses: We made memories and participated in an ancient ritual.

Wearing new clothes at Easter is actually an old Christian custom with pagan roots. As spring approached, it was considered discourteous to greet the goddess of spring in old clothes. After all, she was bestowing new garments on the Earth! So Christians developed the custom of wearing new clothes on Easter Sunday and showing them off by walking around town. This showy demonstration supposedly emphasized union with Christ (putting on Christ’s righteousness, often symbolized by new robes). This was the forerunner to the more secular Easter parade.

But a new Easter outfit is not complete without an Easter bonnet. The forerunner of the Easter bonnet was a wreath of flowers, signaling the return of spring. Later the wreath adorned hats. The round yellow straw hat symbolizes the sun following its circular course.

And what about those beautifully decorated Easter baskets? They stand for nests (grass in a basket) so the Easter bunny has a place to lay her eggs. Although the rabbit is a mammal and bears its young live, it does reproduce prolifically and symbolizes abundant life.

Regardless of how we celebrate, Easter means joy at the springtime renewal of the Earth, which gave up its dead through the resurrection of Christ. Christ’s death does not happen over and over again as a part of a recurring seasonal cycle, but is a one-time event at a specific time in history. From this one-time resurrection, our hope springs eternal.

Connie Regener, an Irvine resident and doctoral student at Fuller Theological Seminary, is a member of the teaching staff at Irvine Presbyterian Church.

On Faith is a forum for Orange County clergy and others to offer their views on religious topics of general interest. Submissions, which will be published at the discretion of The Times and are subject to editing, should be delivered to Orange County religion page editor Jack Robinson.