EASTER DAY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3762, 28 March 1907, Page 2

EASTER DAY.

On Easter morn we throw aside the austerities of Dent and burst out into songs of joy and happiness in the memory of a risen Christ. Everyone seems to catch the brightness of Easter; and it does not matter what denomination or church they belong to, all find in Easter Day a universal happiness. The Festival of Easter has been observed from Apostolic times, though the time of its celebration has varied in different parts of the Church. The Asiatic Christians followed the practice of St. John, keeping Easter Day on the fourteenth day of the month of Nisan. The Western Christians kept the Festival on the Sunday after the Passover. In 3x4 a.d, the Council of Arles directed that Easter should be celebrated everywhere on the same da} r . Finally by a decree of the Nicene Council, a.d. 325, Easter Day was fixed on the Sunday nearest to the calculated anniversary of the actual Resurrection. This is determined by the Paschal Moon. In the Church of England prayer book it says, “Easter Day is always the first Sunday after the full moon, which happens upon or next after the twenty-first day of March ; and if the full moon happens upon a Sunday, Easter Day is the Sunday after. ’ ’ Easter is a movable Feast, being dependent as to date on the Paschal Moon. The word Easter is an Anglo-Saxon name, in German it is Ostern. It is believed to be derived from a Teutonic goddess Eastor or Eoster whose festival came in April. The Latin name is Pascha, the Passover, and in French Paques. Pascha was a putting into a Greek form of the Hebrew Pesach, which means to ‘ ‘ leap over. ’ ’ The word “Passover” in the Bib?e is an attempt to translate the Hebrew word. There is still in many countries the custom of the ‘ ‘ Pask Egg. ’ ’ These eggs are boiled hard and coloured with ‘ink of various tints—boys and girls play with them, throwing them like balls into the air. In the Eastern Church the Christians salute each other on Easter Hay with the words, 1 ‘ Jesus Christ is risen from the dead,” to which the answer is made, “ He is risen indeed. ’ ’ Easter is the Queen of all the Festivals : it is a day so bright that it casts its rays on all the Sundays of the year, and requires a weekly festival to commemorate it. It speaks to everybody of the joy of life and of the joy of victory, and it carries with it the sense of security.