Saturday, 4 April 2015

Eastertide

The word ‘Easter’ itself comes from the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre/Ostara (with whom the association of rabbits is supposed to originate from) and the Christian festival of Easter began pretty early on as a successor of the Jewish Passover.  



The actual date of Easter is one that has been contentious for a very long time and anyone who has been to Orthodox areas of the world will know that they have a completely different date to other areas of the Christian world (I speak from experience, ended up having two Easter’s in one year and was thoroughly confused until Google helped me out) (Barnett: 63-64).

For those of us in the West, the Council of Nicea in 325 AD decreed that Easter would take place on the 1st Sunday following the 1st full moon after the 21st March. This date was apparently picked in order that it did not clash with passover and it was the Emperor Constantine that is apparently responsible for the gaudy dress and elaborate church ceremonies that form the Easter celebrations. 

#WrongConstantine
If in doubt, blame Constantine.

Easter celebrations continued to evolve over the years and around the world and continued to incorporate pagan elements into the Christian festival (the word for this is ‘syncretism’). 

As I’m sure you know, Easter is the most important festival in the Christian calendar and was taken very seriously as a result during the middle Ages. At the abbey of Centula (Saint-Riquier) in Northern France for example, on Easter Sunday it was such an important day that the priests celebrated mass in the western gallery of the church (the bit upstairs if you’re standing in the nave) in order that more men and women could be accommodated at this public mass. Afterwards, “the priests could descent the spiral stairs to give communion to those below” (Huitson: 45).

Not everyone felt holy during Easter week apparently and the citizens of Whalley parish in the early sixteenth century decided to rat on their neighbours. Jacob and Nicholas Robinson were accused of working too late on Saturdays in general, AND of making a plough and cutting hedges during Holy Week (the week before Easter). Meanwhile, the wife of John Hay was accused of doing some gardening during this week. Several others even dared to plough during this holy time (Cooke: 90-91). All of these accusations took place in the same year and it makes you wonder which particular member of the parish was the curtain ‘twitcher’ who ran to the local prior whenever they sensed infractions. 


Notes

Barnett, J. (1949) “The Easter Festival -A Study in Cultural Change” in American Sociological Review, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 62-70

Cooke, A. (1901), Act book if the ecclesiastical court of Whalley (Manchester: Chetham Society) 

Huitson, T. (2014), Stairway to Heaven: The functions of medieval upper spaces (Oxford: Oxbow Books)

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