April 20, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, bestselling author Ace Collins reveals the stories behind the events and traditions that shaped Easter, introducing stories you've likely never heard and offering a deeper appreciation for the holiday’s familiar hallmarks. You won't want to miss this one!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
The treasured traditions of Easter. Little bunnies, parades, new Easter outfits,
sunrise services, passion plays, and so much more infuse our
celebration of the season with meaning and glowing memories. Best
(00:33):
Selling author Ace Collins is here to reveal the events
and backgrounds that shape the best loved customs of Easter,
introducing you to stories you've never heard in a deeper
appreciation for the holidays familiar hallmarks. Here's best selling author
Ace Collins.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Of all of the holidays that we celebrate here in
the United States, there's no doubt that Easter is the
oldest holiday. It may not be the oldest official holiday
as far as our calendar goes, but of people who
have celebrated Easter, it goes back to the very first
Easter when people celebrated Christ being risen, when they met
the risen Christ. And for the first or generation or
(01:15):
two after that, they would get together and visit about
what happened on that day and talk to people who
actually saw a risen Christ or actually saw the crucifixion
or knew Christ when he walked the earth. And in
that sense, it was a very very personal holiday as
opposed to something that had traditions. And you did this
(01:37):
on day, you got up on before the sun came
up and went out to the cross that you had
displayed somewhere. It was an opportunity to visit with people
who were their first hand, who knew Jesus. And therefore
it wasn't as much a holiday, if you will, as
it was more of a reunion of people gathering to
(01:58):
talk about what to them were current events, recent current events.
It was like probably not much different than visiting with
grandparents who may have remembered Pearl Harbor as a little kid,
and therefore going what was your impressions, how did you
find out, what did you see, what did you know?
Or if you are black, talking to somebody who knew
(02:22):
Rosa Parks or Jackie Robinson and were there when that happened.
So initially it was very much a religious holiday, but
it was also a holiday where people talked about historical
event that had reshaped history and when the persecutions were
going on and things like that. It was that remembrance
of that holiday that gave these people the courage to
(02:45):
embrace faith in a very open fashion, no matter what
the consequences were. You were being sought out, you were
trying to be quieted, you were trying to be controlled,
and yet you weren't. So Easter therefore became a gathering
of those people, sometimes in secret, after Christ's death and resurrection,
(03:08):
so that they could actually celebrate Easter. When you look
at the holiday and as it evolved, it evolved and
grew after the fall of the Roman Empire to where
churches met on specific days, and that was hooked in
to pass Over, by the way, and it's so complicated,
we're not going to even get into how we determine
when Easter is every year. I wish it was set
(03:28):
on one holiday, but because Passover moves, it moves as well.
But they understood it really well back in the dark
ages of Middle Ages. Knew what was going to happen,
and it was a day to look forward to for
a couple of different reasons. One, it was a special
day of church celebrations. It was a special day of gathering.
There were people that you may have seen only once
(03:50):
or twice a year that you got to see at Easter. Secondly,
winter was ending, spring was beginning, and winter was harsh
in many of the areas where Docs and Catholic Easters
were celebrated in the Dark Ages and Middle Ages, and
therefore a chance to get out of your house for
maybe the first time, to see others, to visit with people,
(04:12):
and a chance for children to kind of celebrate having
an opportunity for the winter to go away and to
promise the spring to be there. When Martin Luther nailed
his Document to the Wall, Easter changed a little bit
because a lot of Protestant groups looked at Easter and
its association with pagan rituals and kind of threw it out.
(04:36):
I mean, the Catholic still celebrated Easter, but in the
United States and Great Britain, Easter was pretty much frowned
upon until the eighteen hundreds. And the eighteen hundred saw
resurgence of Easter in Protestant churches throughout Europe and the
United States, and a growth of Easter celebrated as an
(04:59):
opportunity for people together in a church and remember, much
as those early Christians did, Easter has both a historical
event and Easter as a transformation event in people's lives,
and I think Easter therefore exists because of a transformation,
(05:19):
a transformation experience of a man who was supposedly dead
rising from the grave and taking on a new presence.
And two a transformation of individuals who accepted that faith
and therefore had their lives and in particularly their point
of view trans formed as they went about what they
(05:39):
did on earth. And that's the transformation it's supposed to
knowing Christ is supposed to change you. Easter became an
opportunity for people to celebrate that transformation.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
And you've been listening to Ace Collins tell the story
of Easter, and by the way, his book is called
Stories Behind the Traditions and Songs of Easter, and that's
available at local bookstores or wherever you buy your books.
And my goodness, what a way to think about Easter
and that very first Easter celebration, because it wasn't really
(06:10):
a celebration, as Ace points out, it's a reunion. These
people were actually there, and what a thing to have seen.
And by the way, the persecution they were going to
face from having seen it and were sharing it and
were transformed by that experience themselves as they became believers
and Christians. And by the way, the oldest oldest a
(06:34):
holiday is Passover itself. Three thousand years plus Jews have
been celebrating that sacred day. When we come back, more
of this remarkable storytelling the story of Easter, the story
of transformation, not only of the world, but of billions
of people who call themselves Christians.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Here on our American.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Stories, Lihabibe here the host of all American Stories.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Every day on this show, we're bringing.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our
big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do
the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to,
but they're not free to make. If you love what
you hear, go to Alamerican Stories dot com and click
the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go
to Alamerican Stories dot com and give And we continue
(08:10):
with our American Stories and with Ace Collins telling the
story of Easter. Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
If you looked at the word Christmas, it means worship christ.
I mean there is no doubt that it is Christian
in its origin. If you look at Easter, Easter is
a derivative of a goddess of fertility named Ostra Eostra
e Austere several different pronunciations. In the United States, we
most typically pronounced it Ostra, and Ostra was a goddess
(08:45):
who looked like a rabbit, by the way, had certain
rabbit features. And before there was missionaries arrived in Europe,
Ostra was looked upon as this magical goddess who basically
ended winter and spring, and it was a celebration of spring.
Early missionaries seized upon this and used the celebration of
(09:07):
Ostra as a celebration of the resurrection because Easter was
celebrated in the spring as well. And as people converted
to Christianity, they brought Ostra's feelings with them. Well, they
brought that elements of the holiday, some of the things
they celebrated, some of the ways they dressed. We'll talk
about eggs here in a little bit, but that became
(09:27):
a part of the Christmas celebration of the church, and
the Protestants during Reformation looked upon those things as being
outside of the Bible. They were brought in later they
had connections with things that were not Christian, and so
what they did was anything that they found that looked
(09:47):
as if you could not trace it to the New
Testament they tossed out. And so they even tried to
toss out the word Easter, which missionaries had kind of
developed into this celebration of Ouster and transformed that into
the resurrection of Christ. They even really didn't even use
(10:08):
the word Easter very much. The Catholics continued to use it,
but the Protestants didn't, and so therefore there became a
split in the church that was along the lines of
Catholic and Protestant whether Easter should be celebrated or it
should just be a Sunday in which you talked about
the resurrection of Christ. And so it really wasn't a
(10:30):
holiday to many people who were Protestants up until about
eighteen forty eighteen fifty, about the same time people who
were in the Protestant movement started celebrating Christmas. It's really
funny because we as people need structure, so therefore everything
has to be organized, there has to be a plan,
(10:51):
And what you had was all these different celebrations, embracing
all these different things all over. It happened with Christmas.
Christmas was celebrated before they decided in the third century
to have Christmas on December twenty fifth. Christmas was celebrated
all kinds of times of the year. Nobody had a
set day for Christmas, and I Easter had a lot
of those same issues because there wasn't a historic date
(11:13):
in which they could point to where Christ was crucified.
So they looked at all those things, and then thirty
twenty five is about the same time that four years
later they had termed that when Christmas was going to exist,
you were having to establish some type of situation in
the church where everybody was celebrating holidays at the same time. Hence,
the church councils determined here is the date it's going
(11:36):
to happen, once again tied to the lunar cycles after
the Passover.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
And so it's a complicated system.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
You can sit there and read about it, you can
google it, you can figure out how they set those dates,
and then I guarantee you ten minutes later you're going
to be totally lost and forget about it. But the
important thing to know is they established during that time
at least a set Sunday when Easter would be celebrated,
a set Friday for Good Friday, and there you at
(12:08):
least had people celebrating the holiday at the same time,
as opposed to you might have in towns one church
celebrating it one day and then five months later another
church celebrating it. So in that sense, I think the
only modern thing you can tie it to is in
(12:28):
the seventeen hundreds when everybody in Europe and throughout the
world went on the same calendar. Before that, there were
three or four different calendars, and there was a Georgian calendar, calendar,
a Julian calendar, and all these people were celebrating times
and dates at other times. Eventually, with the advent of railroads,
(12:48):
you had to have a standard time frame across the
United States for trains. It was the same kind of thing.
It was not as much spiritual as it was logical.
We got to get a handle on when we can
do this and when we can coordinated. And so historically,
does it have anything to do with when Jesus was crucified.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
We don't know that.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
So it's just a rudimentary time that's tied with Passover,
the celebration of Passover. That came to a point when
this is when we celebrate Easter, This is when we
celebrate the Resurrection. By the way, if you want to
know how confusing all that must have been at the time,
you just simply look at George Washington, who everybody celebrates
(13:27):
his birthday on February twenty second, but the calendar changed
after he was born, so technically he was born according
to the new calendar on February twelfth of a different year.
So you know that must have been confusing at that
particular point. Well, we've celebrated Easter this way forever, and
now suddenly you're telling us we have to celebrate it
here and that time, and so it probably took a
(13:51):
while for people to accept that edict and hold to it.
When you started celebrating Easter because it's Spring and that's
when Ostra's birthday and the rebirth of Spring was celebrated.
People obviously had issues with that when they looked at
the way that people were bringing in some of the
(14:13):
pagan rituals to the church, they had strong issues with that.
And so there was a fundamentalist movement at that time
that said, okay, here's what we can do. We can
read a certain chapter in the Bible, we can dress
a certain way, we can sing certain songs, we can
meet at certain times, but we will not go beyond that.
(14:37):
And so there is so much of the Christian heritage,
though that is tied to things that didn't celebrate the
Resurrection that did happen on Easter, that eventually, even in
the eighteen hundreds, people went back and embraced them, particularly
in the United States and England where they had been ignored.
(14:58):
It's difficult to commercial something that moves. But I still
think it has more to do with the fact that
whereas Christmas went out, jumped outside the realm of being
a religious holiday. And many ways, Christmas is a holiday
that is religious for a certain select group, but Christmas
(15:18):
is also a holiday in non Christian countries around the world, Japan,
China and others that don't have a majority of Christmas
of Christian populations. There was an opportunity in the commercialation
of Christmas was much more successful. Therefore it became a
universal holiday, if you would thanks much more like Thanksgiving.
(15:39):
But Easter has retained its specific Christian roots and the
purpose of Easter, even with the addition of the Easter
body and other things and making it somewhat childlike for children.
In certain ways, this focus is still on the Resurrection,
and I think that's what makes it unique. Eggs have
(16:03):
been an important part of mystical elements of life forever.
I mean the Egyptians would actually put eggs into sarcophaguses
and would put them into tombs. Egg was seen as
the beginning of life.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
And you've been listening to Ace Collins tell the story
of Easter. And by the way, you can get his
book Stories behind the Traditions and Songs of Easter by
going to your local bookstore or hitting Amazon with the
usual digital suspects. And what an interesting story he's telling
that of the sort of Pagans start to this, the
(16:42):
secular start, early missionaries using Ostra, this goddess that looked
like a rabbit that symbolized the end of winter and
the beginning of spring, and the early missionaries using that
as a selling opportunity, as a natural opportunity to get
in there and evangelize. And then of course comes to
the religious divide. Some Protestants didn't like it, Catholics did,
(17:04):
and ultimately even Protestants started to war over this. And
it wasn't until the eighteen forties or fifties then America
itself settled in on this notion of Easter without battle
lines being drawn amongst the various and multiple Christian religious
denominations in this great country. When we come back more
(17:25):
of the story of Easter, a big story, a big
American story, and a big international story. Here on our
American story, and we continue with our American stories and
(18:11):
with Ace Collins telling the story of Easter. Let's pick
up where Ace last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
The Egyptians actually believed that the world began when an
egg was broken, and the yellow part of the egg
became the sun, the rest became the sustenance of the world.
And so eggs have been important in every culture because
eggs represent birth. And in that respect, there is very
little that you can point to at Easter that probably
(18:43):
better represents new birth for Christians than an egg. Now,
it was tied so much to fertility, gods and other
things growing up that Christians probably you know, fought embracing
the egg to begin with. But it was easy to
take an egg if you were a missionary, and use
(19:06):
it as a track and say, Okay, this represents Christ.
This represents the new birth you can have in Christ.
This represents your life. You have been reborn and We
don't use the term reborn much anymore, but it was
a common term that was re used back then, and
so you can understand.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Why they would want the egg to go.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
That we talked earlier about Ostra, the god of fertility,
egg was her symbol as well, and the mere fact
that Easter kind of got named after the celebration of Ostra.
And they changed and as people became Christians, they celebrated
Easter at about the same time as the celebration of
(19:45):
Ostra was the celebration of spring, the celebration of the
rebirth of life, and that's when eggs are laid. So
I mean you also had the situation where the timing
was perfect for eggs to be a part of the celebration.
The interesting thing about it is how well the early
Church did in giving meaning to that. They recognized a
(20:05):
tradition that was a part of the Dark Ages, because
eggs was the sustenances of so many people, and they
would go out and gather eggs, and it was a
child's job.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
To gether the eggs.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
They would gather the eggs in a bonnet they wore
or something and bring them back and that was what
the households would eat.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
That day and cook with that day.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
And if a child, and by the way, they just
weren't chicken eggs or peas and eggs, any kind of
eggs would do. And usually there was a tradition if
a child brought back a really colorful egg, like a
robin's egg, then they got a special prize. And at
Easter they started, because it was in spring, they started
(20:46):
gathering eggs after church services in meadows. Now they didn't
hide eggs, eggs were just there, and so children would
go out and find eggs.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Well.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Eventually the priest, who looked at this old trade that
had nothing to do with Christianity, figured out, you know,
we could take these eggs. We can color these eggs
different colors. Children can find them and they can bring
them back, and we can give them a prize for
gathering the most eggs. But they also have to tell
us what the various colors mean on the eggs. The
(21:18):
color red mint the blood of Christ shed. The blue
was for love, the yellow was for eternal life and
the light that came into the world with Christ, and
green also represented eternal life. You also had colors like
purple that represented the Royalty of Christ. So they would
(21:39):
color eggs various colors, and then the children would have
to explain what those colors were. Now, this was a
time when people didn't read much. Very few people could read.
Services were in languages they didn't understand, laugh and most
often and so this was the foundation, if you will,
for theological growth. And eventually they started artists started coloring
(22:04):
eggs with scenes from the Bible, like a shepherd or
a wise man, or Jesus or a possible or the
parting of the Red Sea. And when a child found
those eggs and they would see that image, they would
have to come back and tell the people what that meant,
and they would actually have to act out a scene
(22:26):
from the Bible. And therefore eggs became teaching tools. And
so here was an ancient custom that had nothing to
do with Christianity that was transformed into being a very
important teaching tool or teaching aid if you will, in
the Dark Ages, in the Middle Ages for the Christian Church.
And coloring Easter eggs therefore, actually is a Christian tradition,
(22:48):
even though the egg itself was born outside of that.
It morphed into having so many things spun off of it.
One of the most interesting things is that they hid
so many different eggs that you could no longer carry
one enough at a bonnet you would break them, or
a hat if you were a young man. And so
(23:10):
they developed baskets. They started weaving baskets. They had the
one purpose of gathering eggs at Easter, and they would
be used each and every year. And those baskets initially
looked like nest. Eventually they put handles on them and
people would.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Carry the baskets.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
The children would carry the baskets, and that where they
could gather more eggs and have more fun. And that
is still an important part of Easter today, even though
a lot of the eggs we find now that we
hide our plastic eggs with things inside them. Interesting point here.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
The rabbit, which has nothing to do.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
With Easter, became an important Easter tradition because there were
so many rabbits in Europe that children hunting for Easter
eggs would scare rabbits.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
When they would hunt for Easter eggs, and.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
They would go to that spot and often find an
egg that a member of the congregation had hid for them,
and little children started telling other little children that it
was the rabbits that laid the eggs, and therefore the
Easter bunny came into fruition through just a rabbit being
at the right place at the right time. And in Germany,
(24:22):
some artisans who made candies started making chocolate Easter rabbits
that were given as treats at Easter, and that opened
up the door for the rabbit to play into Easter
as well. Also, if you go back and look at it,
Oastra had rabbit like features, and supposedly a bird that
(24:44):
admired her so much and came to visit her was
so transformed by her rabbit like beauty that the bird
asked to be transformed into a bunny. And that particular
bunny legend could lay eggs as opposed to normal bunnies
could not. And whether that ties into how the bunny
became a part of Easter, we don't know, but sometime
(25:08):
books were written. Peter Cottontail became a monster hit you know,
several generations ago for little kids.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
And then Dog.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Garnett, the man who gave us two of the great
Christmas songs, Gene Autry who gave us Rudolph and gave
us here comes Santa Claus in nineteen fifty recorded a
song about here comes Peter Cottontail that became a million
selling record. And Gene who gave us Rudolph, also gave
us the bunny being fully associated with the Easter holidays.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
And you've been listening to Ace Collins tell the story
of Easter, and Ace also did this for us for
the story of Christmas. And you can go to our
American Stories and go in the search bar and type
in his name Ace Collins. He does this as well
as anybody out there writing about the things we think
we know and do know, but don't know the full
(26:01):
story behind how they came to be. My goodness, I'm
learning just about the tradition of eggs and in the
Middle Ages, why we got the colors and the coloring
of eggs that we do well without thinking about it
now moreover, the painting of eggs, What an interesting idea,
and all of it to teach what were essentially mostly
illiterate masses who didn't understand the church teachings that were
(26:26):
mostly in Latin at the time, and thus the beginning
of a tradition that we all love, so many Americans
love and practice today. And when we come back more
of the remarkable storytelling of Ace Collins. His book Stories
Behind the Traditions and Songs of Easter is available in
(26:47):
bookstores or anywhere else you get books. Again when we
return more of the story of Easter. Here on our
American Stories.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
And we're back with.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Our American stories and the story of Easter is told
by Ace Collins. Let's pick up again where we last
left off.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
By the way, I we'll tell you this, in the
eighteen forties, fifties, and sixties, people were already dressing up
like bunnies to sell stuff in stores. So it is
a tradition in the United States that goes back at
least that far. And there was a bunny in the
eighteen sixties at the Easter egg rolls at the White
House with Abraham Lincoln when he began the Easter egg
hunts at the White House, there was a bunny there
(28:10):
that was helping the kids find those eggs at those
first Easter hunts on the.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
White House lawn.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
When you look at the American traditions, the Easter bunny
has become so important.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
And it's that way in England as well.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
In the UK that about ninety percent of people who
celebrate Easter have an Easter Bunny as a part of
their celebration, even if they're Christians, they still use the
Easter Bunny to bring a little bit of.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
The childlike feeling and war to it. It has.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
You know, you could actually trace Santa Claus's roots to
Saint Nicholas of Baria and another great Christian man from
lat Via who we know as King winsil Is. Today
there is no such way you can trace the Easter
Bunny's roots that way, and the Easter Bunny you can't
tie into any way or shape the resurrection or any
(28:56):
type of Christian value. But the Easter Bunny is kind
of a unique childlike symbol of Easter that I think
makes the holiday a bit less serious than it is otherwise.
And if you think about that, that may be good,
because when you talk about the crucifixion and the horrible
(29:18):
crucifixion of an innocent man, that is unsettling. Resurrection brings hope,
but still you have that unsettling element hanging over it,
and therefore, in that way, Easter is a very adult holiday.
It's not the birth of a baby. It's the crucifixion
and the resurrection. And I think by having elements like
(29:41):
Easter egg hunts and an Easter Bunny, you at least
bring something that might offer some comfort, some joy, and
maybe tampered down a little bit of the horrific nature.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
Of the Crucifixion.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
And I don't mean that in a negative sense, because
I think the Crucifixion is very, very important. But I
do think that having a bit of this holiday with
some childlike references probably helps open the door to talking
about the real Easter when children get old enough to
fully understand it better, because they already have something of
(30:18):
an Easter tradition. And now you could sit there and say, Okay,
here's what the color of the eggs mean, here is
what really happened. Here is what life has promised to you.
This egg can represent new life, the new life you
have when you fully understand who Christ is. Back in
(30:38):
the fifteen sixteen seventeen hundreds, the Easter egg tree was
an important part of the celebration of Easter, and they
would actually drain they would poke a hole in eggs,
drain everything out, paint them various colors and hang them
on trees, and once again they would talk about the
various colors and what they meant with their children, and
the Easter eggs worth the ornaments if you and there
(31:00):
are still, I know, still know a few people who
have an Easter tree. It is not a very common celebration,
but it is something that has happened. But once again,
I think the reason we don't do that to as
great as a stint as they did all of those
years ago is the lack of commercialization of this holiday.
I think stores realized you probably couldn't sell enough Easter
(31:22):
decorations to hang on trees to make it worthwhile, as
opposed to Christmas, where you have all these themed trees
and everything else going on.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
I still think the.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Lack of commercialization is due strictly to the point of.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
This.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
You can't take the spiritual nature of Easter away. Ultimately,
at the heart is the resurrection of Christ after the crucifixion,
and therefore it's hopelessness to hope, you know, and it's
darkness to light. And I think those things are so
(31:59):
profound that the traditions that we have with it, while good,
pale in comparison to what the real meaning of a
holiday is. You know, you can argue that the beginning
of life is very important, and it is, and that's
why we celebrate Christ's birth, and that's why Christmas became
this international holiday, even though it was commercialized into being
(32:22):
a non religious holiday for many.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
But Easter was.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
The end and then the new beginning, and I don't
find many ways that you can fully commercialize that. You
have to actually internalize that into something that was spiritual,
and I think that's very important. Now, that doesn't mean
that Christians haven't used Easter in ways that were less
(32:52):
than spiritual. Throughout the eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds,
in New York City, there were people who walked up
and down Broadway after church services on Easter Sunday, and
they walked up and down Broadway for one in one
own reason that was to show off their new clothes.
And they were trying to outdo everybody else. So there
were elements that had nothing to do with how we
(33:12):
should respond to each other. They wanted to be judged
on how good they looked that day, and so you
wanted to have the most colorful bonnet, you wanted to
have the nicest new suit. You're wanted your kids to
look better than the other kids. And that was essentially
the advent of the Easter parades in the United States.
Now in Europe, Easter parades dated back to the Middle Ages,
(33:33):
and those parades were the stations of the Cross where
people would go and actually retrace what happened the last
week of Christ's life, from home Sunday to the finals,
the Last Supper, to betrayal, to crucifixions. Every place you
stopped on that parade portrayed that differently of many people
(33:55):
call it to walk to ammis now, but that was
a part of the early Christmas parades.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
In America. We never really had that as.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
A part of our Eastern celebration, but we did have
parades where we've tried to show off how good we looked.
And so when you think about the great movie, the
Easter Parade Movie with Judy Garland, it was based on
that walking up and down the streets of New York
showing off how good you looked when you just went
to church. So one it was advertising, hey, I went
to church on Easter, and two it was advertising, look
(34:28):
how good I looked going to church on Easter. And
that's a unique tradition that probably has even less connection
with the Bible than the Easter Bunny does. When you
look at Easter, you're looking at a holiday once again,
that's deeply spiritual. And I think the important thing that
(34:50):
we all need to remember is that whether you call
it Easter or Resurrection Sunday, it is a time of reflection,
a time of hope. And I think it's a time
that we need to realize that the people who knew
Jesus spent three days scared the death and hiding until
(35:12):
they saw him resurrected. And when they saw the resids
directed Christ, it gave them the faith, so much faith
that they lived the rest of their lives spreading that
message in except for one of those eleven who did
not portray him, you know, Judas portrayed him. The other
eleven didn't. They were persecuted, they lost their lives for
(35:36):
that faith. I think John was the only one who
managed to live a full life. And I don't think
and I tell kids this all the time, I don't
think these people would have died for a lie. They
saw Christ, they saw the resurrected Christ, and they died
telling that message. And I think of if there's a
(35:57):
message that we need to latch onto Easter the Resurrection
is these people saw it and they were willing to
live for it, and they were willing to die for it.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
And a terrific job on the production by Greg Hengler.
And a special thanks once again to Ace Collins his
book Stories Behind the Traditions and Songs of Easter.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
It's a must.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Get read it with your family, share it with your family.
And by the way, his Hour on Christmas is just
as good. And you can go to our American Stories
dot com and you can plug in Ace Collins's name
on the search bar and you'll be able to listen
to that with you and your family as well.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
And it's so true.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
As a said, Easter is a time of reflection and hope,
and it was fascinating listening to him describe why Easter
and the Easter eggs and the bunnies and all of
those traditions are so important, and it's essentially true. This
is a very difficult celebration and the Crucifixion is rough.
(37:02):
Kids are ready when they're ready for such things, and
families know this, and it's why we use the bunnies
and why we use the eggs. Three year olds aren't
ready for the full story of the Crucifixion. It's a
rough story, but it's a great introduction. It's a great
way to ease families in to the story of what
happened on the day of the Crucifixion and three days
(37:23):
later the resurrection. A terrific job, as always by Ace
telling these stories, the sacred stories, and also these secular stories.
There are many people in this country who manage to
somehow celebrate Easter and are not Christian. The story of
Easter here on our American story
Speaker 2 (38:01):
Than
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
The treasured traditions of Easter. Little bunnies, parades, new Easter outfits,
sunrise services, passion plays, and so much more infuse our
celebration of the season with meaning and glowing memories. Best
(00:33):
Selling author Ace Collins is here to reveal the events
and backgrounds that shape the best loved customs of Easter,
introducing you to stories you've never heard in a deeper
appreciation for the holidays familiar hallmarks. Here's best selling author
Ace Collins.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Of all of the holidays that we celebrate here in
the United States, there's no doubt that Easter is the
oldest holiday. It may not be the oldest official holiday
as far as our calendar goes, but of people who
have celebrated Easter, it goes back to the very first
Easter when people celebrated Christ being risen, when they met
the risen Christ. And for the first or generation or
(01:15):
two after that, they would get together and visit about
what happened on that day and talk to people who
actually saw a risen Christ or actually saw the crucifixion
or knew Christ when he walked the earth. And in
that sense, it was a very very personal holiday as
opposed to something that had traditions. And you did this
(01:37):
on day, you got up on before the sun came
up and went out to the cross that you had
displayed somewhere. It was an opportunity to visit with people
who were their first hand, who knew Jesus. And therefore
it wasn't as much a holiday, if you will, as
it was more of a reunion of people gathering to
(01:58):
talk about what to them were current events, recent current events.
It was like probably not much different than visiting with
grandparents who may have remembered Pearl Harbor as a little kid,
and therefore going what was your impressions, how did you
find out, what did you see, what did you know?
Or if you are black, talking to somebody who knew
(02:22):
Rosa Parks or Jackie Robinson and were there when that happened.
So initially it was very much a religious holiday, but
it was also a holiday where people talked about historical
event that had reshaped history and when the persecutions were
going on and things like that. It was that remembrance
of that holiday that gave these people the courage to
(02:45):
embrace faith in a very open fashion, no matter what
the consequences were. You were being sought out, you were
trying to be quieted, you were trying to be controlled,
and yet you weren't. So Easter therefore became a gathering
of those people, sometimes in secret, after Christ's death and resurrection,
(03:08):
so that they could actually celebrate Easter. When you look
at the holiday and as it evolved, it evolved and
grew after the fall of the Roman Empire to where
churches met on specific days, and that was hooked in
to pass Over, by the way, and it's so complicated,
we're not going to even get into how we determine
when Easter is every year. I wish it was set
(03:28):
on one holiday, but because Passover moves, it moves as well.
But they understood it really well back in the dark
ages of Middle Ages. Knew what was going to happen,
and it was a day to look forward to for
a couple of different reasons. One, it was a special
day of church celebrations. It was a special day of gathering.
There were people that you may have seen only once
(03:50):
or twice a year that you got to see at Easter. Secondly,
winter was ending, spring was beginning, and winter was harsh
in many of the areas where Docs and Catholic Easters
were celebrated in the Dark Ages and Middle Ages, and
therefore a chance to get out of your house for
maybe the first time, to see others, to visit with people,
(04:12):
and a chance for children to kind of celebrate having
an opportunity for the winter to go away and to
promise the spring to be there. When Martin Luther nailed
his Document to the Wall, Easter changed a little bit
because a lot of Protestant groups looked at Easter and
its association with pagan rituals and kind of threw it out.
(04:36):
I mean, the Catholic still celebrated Easter, but in the
United States and Great Britain, Easter was pretty much frowned
upon until the eighteen hundreds. And the eighteen hundred saw
resurgence of Easter in Protestant churches throughout Europe and the
United States, and a growth of Easter celebrated as an
(04:59):
opportunity for people together in a church and remember, much
as those early Christians did, Easter has both a historical
event and Easter as a transformation event in people's lives,
and I think Easter therefore exists because of a transformation,
(05:19):
a transformation experience of a man who was supposedly dead
rising from the grave and taking on a new presence.
And two a transformation of individuals who accepted that faith
and therefore had their lives and in particularly their point
of view trans formed as they went about what they
(05:39):
did on earth. And that's the transformation it's supposed to
knowing Christ is supposed to change you. Easter became an
opportunity for people to celebrate that transformation.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
And you've been listening to Ace Collins tell the story
of Easter, and by the way, his book is called
Stories Behind the Traditions and Songs of Easter, and that's
available at local bookstores or wherever you buy your books.
And my goodness, what a way to think about Easter
and that very first Easter celebration, because it wasn't really
(06:10):
a celebration, as Ace points out, it's a reunion. These
people were actually there, and what a thing to have seen.
And by the way, the persecution they were going to
face from having seen it and were sharing it and
were transformed by that experience themselves as they became believers
and Christians. And by the way, the oldest oldest a
(06:34):
holiday is Passover itself. Three thousand years plus Jews have
been celebrating that sacred day. When we come back, more
of this remarkable storytelling the story of Easter, the story
of transformation, not only of the world, but of billions
of people who call themselves Christians.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Here on our American.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Stories, Lihabibe here the host of all American Stories.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Every day on this show, we're bringing.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our
big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do
the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to,
but they're not free to make. If you love what
you hear, go to Alamerican Stories dot com and click
the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go
to Alamerican Stories dot com and give And we continue
(08:10):
with our American Stories and with Ace Collins telling the
story of Easter. Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
If you looked at the word Christmas, it means worship christ.
I mean there is no doubt that it is Christian
in its origin. If you look at Easter, Easter is
a derivative of a goddess of fertility named Ostra Eostra
e Austere several different pronunciations. In the United States, we
most typically pronounced it Ostra, and Ostra was a goddess
(08:45):
who looked like a rabbit, by the way, had certain
rabbit features. And before there was missionaries arrived in Europe,
Ostra was looked upon as this magical goddess who basically
ended winter and spring, and it was a celebration of spring.
Early missionaries seized upon this and used the celebration of
(09:07):
Ostra as a celebration of the resurrection because Easter was
celebrated in the spring as well. And as people converted
to Christianity, they brought Ostra's feelings with them. Well, they
brought that elements of the holiday, some of the things
they celebrated, some of the ways they dressed. We'll talk
about eggs here in a little bit, but that became
(09:27):
a part of the Christmas celebration of the church, and
the Protestants during Reformation looked upon those things as being
outside of the Bible. They were brought in later they
had connections with things that were not Christian, and so
what they did was anything that they found that looked
(09:47):
as if you could not trace it to the New
Testament they tossed out. And so they even tried to
toss out the word Easter, which missionaries had kind of
developed into this celebration of Ouster and transformed that into
the resurrection of Christ. They even really didn't even use
(10:08):
the word Easter very much. The Catholics continued to use it,
but the Protestants didn't, and so therefore there became a
split in the church that was along the lines of
Catholic and Protestant whether Easter should be celebrated or it
should just be a Sunday in which you talked about
the resurrection of Christ. And so it really wasn't a
(10:30):
holiday to many people who were Protestants up until about
eighteen forty eighteen fifty, about the same time people who
were in the Protestant movement started celebrating Christmas. It's really
funny because we as people need structure, so therefore everything
has to be organized, there has to be a plan,
(10:51):
And what you had was all these different celebrations, embracing
all these different things all over. It happened with Christmas.
Christmas was celebrated before they decided in the third century
to have Christmas on December twenty fifth. Christmas was celebrated
all kinds of times of the year. Nobody had a
set day for Christmas, and I Easter had a lot
of those same issues because there wasn't a historic date
(11:13):
in which they could point to where Christ was crucified.
So they looked at all those things, and then thirty
twenty five is about the same time that four years
later they had termed that when Christmas was going to exist,
you were having to establish some type of situation in
the church where everybody was celebrating holidays at the same time. Hence,
the church councils determined here is the date it's going
(11:36):
to happen, once again tied to the lunar cycles after
the Passover.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
And so it's a complicated system.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
You can sit there and read about it, you can
google it, you can figure out how they set those dates,
and then I guarantee you ten minutes later you're going
to be totally lost and forget about it. But the
important thing to know is they established during that time
at least a set Sunday when Easter would be celebrated,
a set Friday for Good Friday, and there you at
(12:08):
least had people celebrating the holiday at the same time,
as opposed to you might have in towns one church
celebrating it one day and then five months later another
church celebrating it. So in that sense, I think the
only modern thing you can tie it to is in
(12:28):
the seventeen hundreds when everybody in Europe and throughout the
world went on the same calendar. Before that, there were
three or four different calendars, and there was a Georgian calendar, calendar,
a Julian calendar, and all these people were celebrating times
and dates at other times. Eventually, with the advent of railroads,
(12:48):
you had to have a standard time frame across the
United States for trains. It was the same kind of thing.
It was not as much spiritual as it was logical.
We got to get a handle on when we can
do this and when we can coordinated. And so historically,
does it have anything to do with when Jesus was crucified.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
We don't know that.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
So it's just a rudimentary time that's tied with Passover,
the celebration of Passover. That came to a point when
this is when we celebrate Easter, This is when we
celebrate the Resurrection. By the way, if you want to
know how confusing all that must have been at the time,
you just simply look at George Washington, who everybody celebrates
(13:27):
his birthday on February twenty second, but the calendar changed
after he was born, so technically he was born according
to the new calendar on February twelfth of a different year.
So you know that must have been confusing at that
particular point. Well, we've celebrated Easter this way forever, and
now suddenly you're telling us we have to celebrate it
here and that time, and so it probably took a
(13:51):
while for people to accept that edict and hold to it.
When you started celebrating Easter because it's Spring and that's
when Ostra's birthday and the rebirth of Spring was celebrated.
People obviously had issues with that when they looked at
the way that people were bringing in some of the
(14:13):
pagan rituals to the church, they had strong issues with that.
And so there was a fundamentalist movement at that time
that said, okay, here's what we can do. We can
read a certain chapter in the Bible, we can dress
a certain way, we can sing certain songs, we can
meet at certain times, but we will not go beyond that.
(14:37):
And so there is so much of the Christian heritage,
though that is tied to things that didn't celebrate the
Resurrection that did happen on Easter, that eventually, even in
the eighteen hundreds, people went back and embraced them, particularly
in the United States and England where they had been ignored.
(14:58):
It's difficult to commercial something that moves. But I still
think it has more to do with the fact that
whereas Christmas went out, jumped outside the realm of being
a religious holiday. And many ways, Christmas is a holiday
that is religious for a certain select group, but Christmas
(15:18):
is also a holiday in non Christian countries around the world, Japan,
China and others that don't have a majority of Christmas
of Christian populations. There was an opportunity in the commercialation
of Christmas was much more successful. Therefore it became a
universal holiday, if you would thanks much more like Thanksgiving.
(15:39):
But Easter has retained its specific Christian roots and the
purpose of Easter, even with the addition of the Easter
body and other things and making it somewhat childlike for children.
In certain ways, this focus is still on the Resurrection,
and I think that's what makes it unique. Eggs have
(16:03):
been an important part of mystical elements of life forever.
I mean the Egyptians would actually put eggs into sarcophaguses
and would put them into tombs. Egg was seen as
the beginning of life.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
And you've been listening to Ace Collins tell the story
of Easter. And by the way, you can get his
book Stories behind the Traditions and Songs of Easter by
going to your local bookstore or hitting Amazon with the
usual digital suspects. And what an interesting story he's telling
that of the sort of Pagans start to this, the
(16:42):
secular start, early missionaries using Ostra, this goddess that looked
like a rabbit that symbolized the end of winter and
the beginning of spring, and the early missionaries using that
as a selling opportunity, as a natural opportunity to get
in there and evangelize. And then of course comes to
the religious divide. Some Protestants didn't like it, Catholics did,
(17:04):
and ultimately even Protestants started to war over this. And
it wasn't until the eighteen forties or fifties then America
itself settled in on this notion of Easter without battle
lines being drawn amongst the various and multiple Christian religious
denominations in this great country. When we come back more
(17:25):
of the story of Easter, a big story, a big
American story, and a big international story. Here on our
American story, and we continue with our American stories and
(18:11):
with Ace Collins telling the story of Easter. Let's pick
up where Ace last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
The Egyptians actually believed that the world began when an
egg was broken, and the yellow part of the egg
became the sun, the rest became the sustenance of the world.
And so eggs have been important in every culture because
eggs represent birth. And in that respect, there is very
little that you can point to at Easter that probably
(18:43):
better represents new birth for Christians than an egg. Now,
it was tied so much to fertility, gods and other
things growing up that Christians probably you know, fought embracing
the egg to begin with. But it was easy to
take an egg if you were a missionary, and use
(19:06):
it as a track and say, Okay, this represents Christ.
This represents the new birth you can have in Christ.
This represents your life. You have been reborn and We
don't use the term reborn much anymore, but it was
a common term that was re used back then, and
so you can understand.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Why they would want the egg to go.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
That we talked earlier about Ostra, the god of fertility,
egg was her symbol as well, and the mere fact
that Easter kind of got named after the celebration of Ostra.
And they changed and as people became Christians, they celebrated
Easter at about the same time as the celebration of
(19:45):
Ostra was the celebration of spring, the celebration of the
rebirth of life, and that's when eggs are laid. So
I mean you also had the situation where the timing
was perfect for eggs to be a part of the celebration.
The interesting thing about it is how well the early
Church did in giving meaning to that. They recognized a
(20:05):
tradition that was a part of the Dark Ages, because
eggs was the sustenances of so many people, and they
would go out and gather eggs, and it was a
child's job.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
To gether the eggs.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
They would gather the eggs in a bonnet they wore
or something and bring them back and that was what
the households would eat.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
That day and cook with that day.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
And if a child, and by the way, they just
weren't chicken eggs or peas and eggs, any kind of
eggs would do. And usually there was a tradition if
a child brought back a really colorful egg, like a
robin's egg, then they got a special prize. And at
Easter they started, because it was in spring, they started
(20:46):
gathering eggs after church services in meadows. Now they didn't
hide eggs, eggs were just there, and so children would
go out and find eggs.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Well.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Eventually the priest, who looked at this old trade that
had nothing to do with Christianity, figured out, you know,
we could take these eggs. We can color these eggs
different colors. Children can find them and they can bring
them back, and we can give them a prize for
gathering the most eggs. But they also have to tell
us what the various colors mean on the eggs. The
(21:18):
color red mint the blood of Christ shed. The blue
was for love, the yellow was for eternal life and
the light that came into the world with Christ, and
green also represented eternal life. You also had colors like
purple that represented the Royalty of Christ. So they would
(21:39):
color eggs various colors, and then the children would have
to explain what those colors were. Now, this was a
time when people didn't read much. Very few people could read.
Services were in languages they didn't understand, laugh and most
often and so this was the foundation, if you will,
for theological growth. And eventually they started artists started coloring
(22:04):
eggs with scenes from the Bible, like a shepherd or
a wise man, or Jesus or a possible or the
parting of the Red Sea. And when a child found
those eggs and they would see that image, they would
have to come back and tell the people what that meant,
and they would actually have to act out a scene
(22:26):
from the Bible. And therefore eggs became teaching tools. And
so here was an ancient custom that had nothing to
do with Christianity that was transformed into being a very
important teaching tool or teaching aid if you will, in
the Dark Ages, in the Middle Ages for the Christian Church.
And coloring Easter eggs therefore, actually is a Christian tradition,
(22:48):
even though the egg itself was born outside of that.
It morphed into having so many things spun off of it.
One of the most interesting things is that they hid
so many different eggs that you could no longer carry
one enough at a bonnet you would break them, or
a hat if you were a young man. And so
(23:10):
they developed baskets. They started weaving baskets. They had the
one purpose of gathering eggs at Easter, and they would
be used each and every year. And those baskets initially
looked like nest. Eventually they put handles on them and
people would.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Carry the baskets.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
The children would carry the baskets, and that where they
could gather more eggs and have more fun. And that
is still an important part of Easter today, even though
a lot of the eggs we find now that we
hide our plastic eggs with things inside them. Interesting point here.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
The rabbit, which has nothing to do.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
With Easter, became an important Easter tradition because there were
so many rabbits in Europe that children hunting for Easter
eggs would scare rabbits.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
When they would hunt for Easter eggs, and.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
They would go to that spot and often find an
egg that a member of the congregation had hid for them,
and little children started telling other little children that it
was the rabbits that laid the eggs, and therefore the
Easter bunny came into fruition through just a rabbit being
at the right place at the right time. And in Germany,
(24:22):
some artisans who made candies started making chocolate Easter rabbits
that were given as treats at Easter, and that opened
up the door for the rabbit to play into Easter
as well. Also, if you go back and look at it,
Oastra had rabbit like features, and supposedly a bird that
(24:44):
admired her so much and came to visit her was
so transformed by her rabbit like beauty that the bird
asked to be transformed into a bunny. And that particular
bunny legend could lay eggs as opposed to normal bunnies
could not. And whether that ties into how the bunny
became a part of Easter, we don't know, but sometime
(25:08):
books were written. Peter Cottontail became a monster hit you know,
several generations ago for little kids.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
And then Dog.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Garnett, the man who gave us two of the great
Christmas songs, Gene Autry who gave us Rudolph and gave
us here comes Santa Claus in nineteen fifty recorded a
song about here comes Peter Cottontail that became a million
selling record. And Gene who gave us Rudolph, also gave
us the bunny being fully associated with the Easter holidays.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
And you've been listening to Ace Collins tell the story
of Easter, and Ace also did this for us for
the story of Christmas. And you can go to our
American Stories and go in the search bar and type
in his name Ace Collins. He does this as well
as anybody out there writing about the things we think
we know and do know, but don't know the full
(26:01):
story behind how they came to be. My goodness, I'm
learning just about the tradition of eggs and in the
Middle Ages, why we got the colors and the coloring
of eggs that we do well without thinking about it
now moreover, the painting of eggs, What an interesting idea,
and all of it to teach what were essentially mostly
illiterate masses who didn't understand the church teachings that were
(26:26):
mostly in Latin at the time, and thus the beginning
of a tradition that we all love, so many Americans
love and practice today. And when we come back more
of the remarkable storytelling of Ace Collins. His book Stories
Behind the Traditions and Songs of Easter is available in
(26:47):
bookstores or anywhere else you get books. Again when we
return more of the story of Easter. Here on our
American Stories.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
And we're back with.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Our American stories and the story of Easter is told
by Ace Collins. Let's pick up again where we last
left off.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
By the way, I we'll tell you this, in the
eighteen forties, fifties, and sixties, people were already dressing up
like bunnies to sell stuff in stores. So it is
a tradition in the United States that goes back at
least that far. And there was a bunny in the
eighteen sixties at the Easter egg rolls at the White
House with Abraham Lincoln when he began the Easter egg
hunts at the White House, there was a bunny there
(28:10):
that was helping the kids find those eggs at those
first Easter hunts on the.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
White House lawn.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
When you look at the American traditions, the Easter bunny
has become so important.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
And it's that way in England as well.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
In the UK that about ninety percent of people who
celebrate Easter have an Easter Bunny as a part of
their celebration, even if they're Christians, they still use the
Easter Bunny to bring a little bit of.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
The childlike feeling and war to it. It has.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
You know, you could actually trace Santa Claus's roots to
Saint Nicholas of Baria and another great Christian man from
lat Via who we know as King winsil Is. Today
there is no such way you can trace the Easter
Bunny's roots that way, and the Easter Bunny you can't
tie into any way or shape the resurrection or any
(28:56):
type of Christian value. But the Easter Bunny is kind
of a unique childlike symbol of Easter that I think
makes the holiday a bit less serious than it is otherwise.
And if you think about that, that may be good,
because when you talk about the crucifixion and the horrible
(29:18):
crucifixion of an innocent man, that is unsettling. Resurrection brings hope,
but still you have that unsettling element hanging over it,
and therefore, in that way, Easter is a very adult holiday.
It's not the birth of a baby. It's the crucifixion
and the resurrection. And I think by having elements like
(29:41):
Easter egg hunts and an Easter Bunny, you at least
bring something that might offer some comfort, some joy, and
maybe tampered down a little bit of the horrific nature.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
Of the Crucifixion.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
And I don't mean that in a negative sense, because
I think the Crucifixion is very, very important. But I
do think that having a bit of this holiday with
some childlike references probably helps open the door to talking
about the real Easter when children get old enough to
fully understand it better, because they already have something of
(30:18):
an Easter tradition. And now you could sit there and say, Okay,
here's what the color of the eggs mean, here is
what really happened. Here is what life has promised to you.
This egg can represent new life, the new life you
have when you fully understand who Christ is. Back in
(30:38):
the fifteen sixteen seventeen hundreds, the Easter egg tree was
an important part of the celebration of Easter, and they
would actually drain they would poke a hole in eggs,
drain everything out, paint them various colors and hang them
on trees, and once again they would talk about the
various colors and what they meant with their children, and
the Easter eggs worth the ornaments if you and there
(31:00):
are still, I know, still know a few people who
have an Easter tree. It is not a very common celebration,
but it is something that has happened. But once again,
I think the reason we don't do that to as
great as a stint as they did all of those
years ago is the lack of commercialization of this holiday.
I think stores realized you probably couldn't sell enough Easter
(31:22):
decorations to hang on trees to make it worthwhile, as
opposed to Christmas, where you have all these themed trees
and everything else going on.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
I still think the.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Lack of commercialization is due strictly to the point of.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
This.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
You can't take the spiritual nature of Easter away. Ultimately,
at the heart is the resurrection of Christ after the crucifixion,
and therefore it's hopelessness to hope, you know, and it's
darkness to light. And I think those things are so
(31:59):
profound that the traditions that we have with it, while good,
pale in comparison to what the real meaning of a
holiday is. You know, you can argue that the beginning
of life is very important, and it is, and that's
why we celebrate Christ's birth, and that's why Christmas became
this international holiday, even though it was commercialized into being
(32:22):
a non religious holiday for many.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
But Easter was.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
The end and then the new beginning, and I don't
find many ways that you can fully commercialize that. You
have to actually internalize that into something that was spiritual,
and I think that's very important. Now, that doesn't mean
that Christians haven't used Easter in ways that were less
(32:52):
than spiritual. Throughout the eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds,
in New York City, there were people who walked up
and down Broadway after church services on Easter Sunday, and
they walked up and down Broadway for one in one
own reason that was to show off their new clothes.
And they were trying to outdo everybody else. So there
were elements that had nothing to do with how we
(33:12):
should respond to each other. They wanted to be judged
on how good they looked that day, and so you
wanted to have the most colorful bonnet, you wanted to
have the nicest new suit. You're wanted your kids to
look better than the other kids. And that was essentially
the advent of the Easter parades in the United States.
Now in Europe, Easter parades dated back to the Middle Ages,
(33:33):
and those parades were the stations of the Cross where
people would go and actually retrace what happened the last
week of Christ's life, from home Sunday to the finals,
the Last Supper, to betrayal, to crucifixions. Every place you
stopped on that parade portrayed that differently of many people
(33:55):
call it to walk to ammis now, but that was
a part of the early Christmas parades.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
In America. We never really had that as.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
A part of our Eastern celebration, but we did have
parades where we've tried to show off how good we looked.
And so when you think about the great movie, the
Easter Parade Movie with Judy Garland, it was based on
that walking up and down the streets of New York
showing off how good you looked when you just went
to church. So one it was advertising, hey, I went
to church on Easter, and two it was advertising, look
(34:28):
how good I looked going to church on Easter. And
that's a unique tradition that probably has even less connection
with the Bible than the Easter Bunny does. When you
look at Easter, you're looking at a holiday once again,
that's deeply spiritual. And I think the important thing that
(34:50):
we all need to remember is that whether you call
it Easter or Resurrection Sunday, it is a time of reflection,
a time of hope. And I think it's a time
that we need to realize that the people who knew
Jesus spent three days scared the death and hiding until
(35:12):
they saw him resurrected. And when they saw the resids
directed Christ, it gave them the faith, so much faith
that they lived the rest of their lives spreading that
message in except for one of those eleven who did
not portray him, you know, Judas portrayed him. The other
eleven didn't. They were persecuted, they lost their lives for
(35:36):
that faith. I think John was the only one who
managed to live a full life. And I don't think
and I tell kids this all the time, I don't
think these people would have died for a lie. They
saw Christ, they saw the resurrected Christ, and they died
telling that message. And I think of if there's a
(35:57):
message that we need to latch onto Easter the Resurrection
is these people saw it and they were willing to
live for it, and they were willing to die for it.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
And a terrific job on the production by Greg Hengler.
And a special thanks once again to Ace Collins his
book Stories Behind the Traditions and Songs of Easter.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
It's a must.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Get read it with your family, share it with your family.
And by the way, his Hour on Christmas is just
as good. And you can go to our American Stories
dot com and you can plug in Ace Collins's name
on the search bar and you'll be able to listen
to that with you and your family as well.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
And it's so true.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
As a said, Easter is a time of reflection and hope,
and it was fascinating listening to him describe why Easter
and the Easter eggs and the bunnies and all of
those traditions are so important, and it's essentially true. This
is a very difficult celebration and the Crucifixion is rough.
(37:02):
Kids are ready when they're ready for such things, and
families know this, and it's why we use the bunnies
and why we use the eggs. Three year olds aren't
ready for the full story of the Crucifixion. It's a
rough story, but it's a great introduction. It's a great
way to ease families in to the story of what
happened on the day of the Crucifixion and three days
(37:23):
later the resurrection. A terrific job, as always by Ace
telling these stories, the sacred stories, and also these secular stories.
There are many people in this country who manage to
somehow celebrate Easter and are not Christian. The story of
Easter here on our American story
Speaker 2 (38:01):
Than
Host
Lee Habeeb
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