Life stands before me like an eternal spring
with new and brilliant clothes
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Deep Purple
This
year, everywhere you turn, people seem to be celebrating spring more joyously
than I can ever remember. Perhaps it’s only because it’s been such a very long,
cold, snowy winter for most of us here in the northern and western hemisphere.
The threat of one last bit of snow and ice is potentially still out there as
the temperatures seesaw from 30s to 70s in a matter of hours all across the
country. So our spring celebrations are doubly meaningful for many of us this
year. But celebrating spring has had and still has great religious significance
around the world as well – because spring is about rebirth, being “saved” from
the dead of winter, triumphing over death, enslavement and evil and being
renewed.
Sometimes
we can be very myopic about our own particular celebrations, assuming that they
are the most important or most meaningful. As a Christian, I celebrate the
death and resurrection of Jesus at Easter – as do Christians around the world. There
is no more powerful symbol of renewal, salvation or triumph for Christians of
any denomination than Resurrection or Easter. But Christians are not alone and
not the first to welcome spring, to recall events of salvation or triumph over “the
enemy” – whether that enemy is a brutal winter or an evil person.
While
it is unlikely that you will find cards to celebrate many of these rites if you
go looking for one in a Hallmark store, you will find cards wishing our Jewish
friends a happy holiday about the same time of the year as Christians are
celebrating Holy Week. That’s because in the Jewish faith, the Feast of Pesach
or Passover is celebrated in the spring to commemorate the liberation of the
Israelites from slavery in Egypt, the triumph over both Pharaoh and the
hardships of the desert crossing. It’s an eight day celebration of freedom and
the promise of new life and it begins with a Seder meal that includes
unleavened bread and bitter herbs – symbols of how quickly the Israelites had
to gather their few things and leave Egypt. The events celebrated during
Passover are the heart and soul, the most sacred memories of the Jewish people,
just as the events of Holy Week and Easter are for Christians. Jesus, of
course, celebrated Passover.
Here
are a number of other religious and non-religious rites and celebrations held
around the world at some point between early March and May 1. That’s not a
coincidence – any more than the timing of our Easter celebration is.
The
symbols we attach to Easter may (even the name and the Easter egg and Easter
rabbit) – and probably do – derive from spring festivals in certain Middle
Eastern Mystery religions like Zoroastrianism or Mithraism. But if we look
further afield – beyond the Middle East, we can see other traditions with
similar or related meanings, all having to do with renewal and rebirth in some
way.
Japanese
Buddhists celebrate a spring festival called Ohigan – which literally means “the
other shore gathering” but it is a celebration to honor ancestors and to
express gratitude for enlightenment or awakening, a celebration of the birth of
Buddha and wisdom itself. Those Japanese who practice the indigenous Shinto
religion – an earth based religion – celebrate the spring equinox, praying to the
spirits of nature…of the forest, the mountains, the rivers, the sun and the sea…to
purify the land, to renew it.
In
India, Hindus celebrate Holi, the festival of colors which marks the coming of
spring and the new harvest of winter crops. Part of the celebration includes
huge bonfires that are lit to cleanse the air of evil and symbolize the
destruction of Holika, for whom the festival is named. The ashes from the fires
are applied to the foreheads and some ash taken home to put on children’s
foreheads to protect them against evil.
Wiccans
– another earth and moon based religion – celebrate Ostara or the vernal
equinox marking the first day of spring and the renewed life that comes with
spring. This day has marked special celebrations in ancient cultures too – to honor
Aphrodite, Hathor, and Ostara.
The
Baha’i New Year is celebrated each year beginning at sundown on March 20. It is
preceded by a 19 day period of fasting symbolizing the sparseness of winter or
the less-fruitful growing seasons. But new growth begins with the coming of
spring. The period of fasting is similar to the Christian practice of Lenten
fasting and sacrifice. One month later, those of the Baha’i faith will celebrate
the first day of Ridvan which marks the day when Baha'u'llah proclaimed his
mission as the last of the prophets of God.
The
spring celebrations conclude with the Wiccan celebration of Beltane on May 1 of
each year. It’s a fire festival that represents the coming of summer and the
fertility of the season. This late spring Celtic festival is closely tied to
the farming calendar with prayers for a fruitful harvest.
So
as you can see, Christians are hardly alone in celebrating rites of rebirth,
renewal and salvation. Mankind has always been closely bound to the seasons of
the year, the cycles of growth and harvest, and to the idea of “resurrection”
whether of the physical body or of the spirit or the bursting forth of seeds
and flowers to mark the triumph of life over death.
And
so I wish you each according to your beliefs…a happy Easter, Passover, Ohigan,
Ridvan, or Beltane. Respecting such traditions from all over the world reminds
us once again that we are more alike than different and certainly more
connected that we often realize.
