Easter Sunday

　　Although taken as a given, one question that is rarely asked, but should be, is why Easter has to fall on a Sunday. In 325 AD, the council of Nice issued an edict that read, in pertinent part, "Easter was to fall upon the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the Vernal Equinox; and if said full moon fell on a Sunday, the Easter should be the Sunday after."

　　The Easter celebration was coordinated with older, pre-Christian celebrations of spring. The direct relationship to Sunday as the day sacred to the Sun, the ultimate symbol of life, is obvious; yet the subtle connections to the earlier celebrations of the time of planting and the Moon are of equal importance in determining the day of the Easter celebration.

Easter Baskets

　　The Easter basket originates from the ancient Catholic custom of taking the food for Easter dinner to mass to be blessed. This, too, mirrored the even more ancient ritual of bringing the first crops and seedlings to the temple to insure a good growing season.

　　This practice, combined with the "rabbit's nest" awaited by the Pennsylvania Dutch has evolved in the brightly colored containers filled with sweets, toys and the like left for children on Easter morning by that omnipotent hare.

Bells

　　The timing of the use of bells at Easter comes from France and Italy. While the gentle pealing of these huge instruments can be heard throughout the year, their songs fall silent on Maundy Thursday—the Thursday before Easter—not to be heard again until Easter Sunday, thus marking the resurrection.

　　This Easter tradition, too, has an older origin. In many ancient belief systems the period before an equinox or solstice was a time of reflection on the past seasons. This period of silence would then be marked by a joyous celebration of light and sound that told all that the darkness had fled and that new life was coming back into the world.