Easter (Пасха)

Egg-rolling is a traditional Easter pastime which still flourishes in Britain. It takes place on Easter Sunday or Monday, and

Easter (Пасха)



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  1. The moral lessons given us by Jesus.
  2. When is an Easter?
  3. Eastertide.
  4. Easter egg and Easter hare.
  5. Thoughts from Ireland.
  6. Easter in England.
  7. Easter in Ukraine and Russia



I. The moral lessons given us by Jesus.

Celebrating Easter, seeing the happy faces of people around, hearing the joyful announcements “Christ is risen”, and, on the whole, enjoining these God-blessed sunny spring days, let us pause for a moment and ponder on some of the moral lessons given us by Jesus.


He summed up His “theology” in an amazingly short and simple phrase “God is love”; and meeting people He very often did not teach them, as He actually did from time to time, but offered them a ready sympathy and understanding, even to the degraded and the outcast. To them He spoke in the language of tolerance and benevolence, forgiveness and mercy. That was His love and that was the beginning of the moral revolution that transformed the world.


II. When is a Easter?

The greatest Christian festival of the year is Easter. It is either in March or in April, and millions of people joyously observe Christs resurrection. This holy day never comes before March 22 or after April 25.



III. Eastertide.


Palm Sunday is the Sunday before Easter; for people near Marlborough in Wiltshire it meant following a long-established custom in which willow hazel sprays representing palm were carried up Martinsell Hill.

Maundy Thursday is the Thursday before Easter: the royal maundy describes the gift which for the last five hundred ears or so has been given out by the sovereign on Maundy Thursday to as many men and woman as there are years in his or her age. Once it was clothing which was given out, now it is a sum of money; on odd numbered years the ceremony usually takes place at Westminster Abbey, in even numbered ones at a church or cathedral elsewhere in the country though 1989 seems to have been an exception, for the distribution took place at Birmingham Cathedral in honor of the centenary of the citys incorporation.

On Good Friday, the day of the crucifixion, hot cross buns are always eaten as a sign of remembrance, and in some bakers shops and supermarkets they are on sale for many weeks before. It is a nationwide tradition, though hot cross buns were unknown in some places Bath, for example until the twentieth century. The buns may in fact pre date Christianity, since bread consecrated to the Roman gods was marked with lines intersecting at right angels.



In England, children rolled eggs down hills on Easter morning, a game which has been connected to the rolling away of the rock from Jesus Christs tomb when He was resurrected. British settlers brought this custom to the New World.

One unusual Easter Sunday tradition can be seen at Radley, near Oxford, where parishioners clip or embrace their church they join hands and make a human chain round it. It is Easter Monday, however, which sees a veritable wealth of traditional celebrations throughout the country: to name bat a few, there is morris dancing in many tows, including a big display at Thaxted in Essex; orange rolling, perhaps a descendant of egg roiling, which takes place on Dunstable Downs in Bedfordshire; and for perhaps eight hundred years or more there has been a distribution of food at the Kent village of Biddenden, ten miles from Ashford.

Then there is Leicestershires famous hare pie scramble and bottle kicking which also takes place on Easter Monday; and another custom kept up in many parts of England and Wales and called lifting or heaving was taken by some to symbolize Christs resurrection. On Easter Monday the men lifted any woman they could find, and the women reciprocated the following day; the person was taken by the four limbs and lifted three times to shoulder height. When objections were made that this was a rude, indecent and dangerous diversion a chair bedecked with ribbons and flowers was used instead it was lifted with its victim, turned three times, and put down.

The Easter parade.

The origin of this very picturesque traditional occasion, known affectionately as Easter Parade and starting at 3 oclock in the afternoon of Easter Sunday, is not as remote, or mysterious, as many of the traditions and customs of England; there is no religious, or superstitious significance attached to it whatsoever.

In 1858 Queen Victoria gave it the ultimate cachet of respectability and class by paying it a state visit in the spring. For the occasion she wore, of course, a new spring bonnet and gown. This set the fashion for a display each spring of the newest fashions in millinery and gowns, and from then onwards that traditions has expanded; every society lady vied with her rivals to appear in something more spectacular than anything that had seen before.


IV. Easter egg and Easter hare.

An egg has a symbolical meaning in many centuries. Its well known that eggs had a special significance even in the times of ancient Romans. Eggs were their first disk during meals (“ab ovo”) and they were also in the center of competition as a memory of Zeuss sons, who hatched from eggs. Such competition took place in France, Germany, and Switzerland. Eggs was a sign of hope, life fertility even in the early epoch. In Christianity, the Lords gift, which has begun in Jesus Christ. Eggs spreading as the Easter symbols turned to be possible because they sewed as an original rent or as a tax. The Easter was one of the days when this pay could be accomplished.

Excavations witness that traditions of paintings on eggs have been existing for 5000 years and have their regional peculiarities. Especially in Slavonic countries eggs are decorated with many colored pictures of Christian motives. As expensive souvenirs it was a habit to give eggs made of noble metals, marble, was and wood.

The Easter hare, which, children believe, brings the Easter eggs, may be understood as a transformed Easter lamb. In those places, where there was no sheepbreeding, a hare substituted for a sheep in the Raster meal. Due to its ability not to sleep the hare become a symbol of resurrection of Jesus Christ.


Easter Eggs.

Wherever Easter is celebrated, there Easter eggs are usually to be found. In their modern form, they are frequently artificial, mere imitations of the real thing, made of chocolate or marzipan or sugar, or of two pieces of coloured and decorated cardboard fitted together to make an eggs-shaped case containing some small gift. These are the Eas

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