Happy Easter!

If you are a Christian, today is the holiest day of your religious calendar: Easter Sunday, the day that commemorates Christ's rising from the dead following the crucifixion. If you are Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Shinto, or any other religion, it's just another Sunday.

Easter is more than a religious celebration, though. One factor which allowed Christianity to spread around the world over the centuries was its skill at converting existing pagan festivals into Christian celebrations as a way of accommodating new believers. The celebration of Easter was fixed on a date in the Spring as a way to absorb pagan rituals of rebirth celebrating the beginning of a new growing season, and Christmas was celebrated in the depths of winter to accommodate pagan celebration of the winter solstice.

Easter was traditionally, and still officially is, the major holiday of the Christian calendar, celebrating as it does the resurrection of Christ. But, as one of my co-workers pointed out in a discussion yesterday, Christmas has far eclipsed Easter as a popular and gaily celebrated holiday. The Christmas tree with gifts piled beneath it tends to appeal more to children than an Easter basket filled with colored eggs and candy...not to mention that celebrating the birth of a child is easier for young children to understand than celebrating abstract concepts like death and resurrection.

Nowadays, Easter is an excuse for Spring sales events, Easter egg hunts, and dressing up in new Spring hats and dresses to go to church. If it reminds most people of anything in particular, it's the beginning of the gardening and baseball seasons.

Whatever you celebrate today, and for whatever reason you celebrate it, I hope your day is a happy and restful one. As we get ready to face the start of a new work week and more barrages of bad news, it's always good to have an excuse to celebrate something.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo