Easter

Origin

Easter celebrates the central event of the Christian faith: the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. After being crucified and buried on Friday, Jesus rose on the first day of the week, and his tomb was found empty. The first believers, all Jews, did not invent a new festival out of nothing — they were keeping Passover when these events unfolded, and they came to see the cross and empty tomb as Passover's true meaning. Within a generation the church was gathering on 'the Lord's Day,' Sunday, to celebrate the resurrection every week, with an annual high feast at the Passover season.

Historical Background

For its first centuries the church debated when to keep Easter; the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 settled on the Sunday after the first spring full moon, which is why the date moves each year. The English name 'Easter' likely comes from an old word for spring or the season's dawn, while most languages keep a form of the Hebrew 'Pesach' — Pascha — tying the feast directly to Passover. Around Easter grew a whole season: forty days of Lenten preparation, the solemn services of Holy Week, the all-night Easter Vigil, and the joyful sunrise services still held today.

How It's Observed

Holy Week leads up to Easter: Palm Sunday recalls Jesus entering Jerusalem, Maundy Thursday his last supper, Good Friday his death. Then, often before dawn on Sunday, churches gather for sunrise services with the ancient greeting, 'Christ is risen!' answered by 'He is risen indeed!' Buildings are dressed in white and gold, fasting gives way to feasting, and many are baptized. Eggs — a sign of new life breaking out of a sealed shell — and spring flowers like the lily carry the theme of resurrection through homes and sanctuaries.

In Christ

Easter is not a feast that points to Christ — it is the feast of Christ himself. Everything the older festivals anticipated converges here: the Passover lamb is slain and its protection secured; the firstfruits are raised, for Paul calls the risen Jesus 'the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep' (1 Corinthians 15:20), the first sheaf of a harvest of resurrection that will include all who belong to him. His rising is the Father's public verdict that the cross worked, that sin is paid for and death defeated. As Paul says, if Christ has not been raised, the faith is empty — but he has been raised.

Why It Matters Today

Easter is the reason the church exists. It declares that death is not the end of the human story, that wrongs will be set right, and that the God who raised Jesus can bring new life out of any grave. For believers it turns grief into hope and makes every Sunday a small Easter. It is the one claim on which the whole faith stands or falls — and the church has staked everything on the empty tomb.

Scriptural Basis

Did You Know

• Easter has no fixed date because it follows the lunar cycle of Passover — which is also why Christians worldwide sometimes celebrate it on different Sundays.
• Christians began meeting on Sunday rather than the Saturday Sabbath precisely because it was the day of resurrection — making the weekly rhythm of the church itself a witness to Easter.
• The earliest witnesses to the empty tomb in all four Gospels are women — striking in a culture where their testimony carried little legal weight, and a detail many take as a mark of the accounts' honesty.