Happy Easter

East London News wishes all our readers a happy Easter.

Easter is one of the two major holidays in the UK set in accordance with a major Christian Festival (the other being Christmas).  The third major holiday, the summer holiday, arises out of the need for children to be helping in the fields and bringing the harvest in – back in the days when Britain relied on labour intensive agriculture.  What does Easter mean for practising Christians, and how should it be celebrated in a 21st century, multicultural, advanced industrial society?

Easter Sunday itself is the centrepiece of a much longer period of religious observance which developed in the Christian Church.  The period begins with (approximately) 40 days of Lent.  Although Lent is probably seen in modern Britain as a period when the Christian gives something up – chocolate, smoking or gossip (on The Archers, that is) – Lent has a wider meaning for practising Christians.  It grew to become a period of general fasting: not so much a total abstinence (as in Ramadan) but at least a time of eating plainer food, excluding animal products for some believers, allowing fish or poultry for others.  There are probably few practising Christians who observe Lent to this extent in the UK today.  Secularists point out that Lent coincides with a time of scarcity of food supplies in mediaeval times: winter stores are running out and the new harvest is not yet here.  They say that at a time when the Christian Church was a dominant force across western society, Lenten fasting is the Church’s way of giving the people a reason for the food scarcity so that they do not become discontented and challenge the authorities.

Practising Christians would say that the fasting is to mark Christ’s 40 days in the wilderness, where he was tempted – and the fasting period is also, therefore, to remind the faithful to resist temptation.  It is therefore also a time of penance, marked by giving up other luxuries and doing good deeds, and of prayer.

Lent ends with Good Friday: the day on which Christians commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.  Jesus wa

s charged with blasphemy, but the sentence (handed out by the local ruler Pontius Pilate) was bumped up to crucifixion because a crowd of people demanded crucifixion.  Pilate famously washed his hands to show that he did not agree with the crowd, but then sent Jesus off to be crucified so there wouldn’t be a riot.  Trying to wash their hands of the consequences of their decisions is still a trait in our rulers today: the welfare benefit cap being the latest example – as is exemplary sentencing (last summer’s riots).  Such is the way that self-professed Christian rulers follow the example of past rulers and do not ally themselves with Christ’s experience.  On the other hand, listening to the people has fallen out of favour.

On Easter Sunday, Christ rose from the dead to prove that as well as being human he was also the son of God.  This is the cornerstone of the Christian faith which gives the rationale for Christ’s followers to form their own Church – a Church which went on to dominate the development of western society for nearly 2,000 years.  It is also a Church which has split into tens of different groupings over the centuries – with more factions than Tower Hamlets Labour Group.

To practising Christians, Easter Sunday symbolises their belief that once they die in this world, they will be resurrected in an afterlife.  Secularists would point out that the Church has often used this belief as a way to keep the population quiet and obedient in civil matters.  This sentiment is summed up in the song The Preacher and the Slave written by US labour activist Joe Hill in the early 20th century as a parody of the hymn In The Sweet By and By.  Whereas the hymn promised that “In the sweet by and by we shall meet on that beautiful shore”, Hill’s parody offered the refrain:

“You will eat, bye and bye,
“In that glorious land above the sky,
“Work and pray, live on hay,
“You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.”

The number of people marking Easter as a religious festival today constitute very much a minority of the population.  The majority of the population, however, can also reflect on the official message of Easter: that there can be a new and better future for all of us.  Whether that will be delivered here on earth and we shall see it before we die is in our hands.  In the meantime, there will be chocolate.