Resurrecting Easter: A Three Part Series

Part One: In The Beginning

Christmas is my FAVORITE holiday. Bells. Lights. Snow. (Well...in Texas...we can pretend.) Cookies. Special movies. THE BEST MUSIC. Everything about Christmas makes me giddy, bouncing on my toes, clapping my hands and squealing like a little girl. Easter…Easter is different.

Easter was a joyous holiday when I was a child. Baskets. Bunnies. Bonnets. New matching dresses each year that Mom usually made for her three little blonde girls. White shoes (finally!). Christ the Lord is Risen Today! Haaaaaaaaaa-le-lu-ia! It was a day to look forward to every year for many reasons. 

Resurrection Sunday is a holy day, a day to celebrate for sure. But growing up Baptist I had no lead up to Easter, not really. It just…was…one Sunday, sudden and unpredictable date-wise, although different from other Sundays. I had Catholic friends in high school and they suddenly ate fish on Fridays (I resolved every year to give up broccoli for Lent but Mom would have none of it.) But other than that, for me, Easter…just…happened.

It wasn’t until we moved to New Braunfels that Easter gained real meaning. Our pastor preached one Sunday that “Christmas is Easter, Part One; and Easter is Christmas, Part Two.” Suddenly the two church holidays were connected in a new way. Bookends, if you will. I began looking for, and finding, connections between the two days. Many Christmas carols point to the cross. Bethlehem would always lead to Calvary. I paid more attention, sort of, to the days leading up to Easter. But for Texas Baptist Laura, Easter was still a day that snuck up on me with that silly moveable date habit that it has. It had a special holiness, especially with the connection to Christmas, but it still…just…happened. Until we moved to Italy.

Moving to a foreign country changes the way you see the world. Moving to Catholic Country also changed the way I saw the calendar. I attended a Bible Study on post with friends of many different denominations…Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopal, Presbyterian, and I even became friends with a few Catholics. There were banners hanging in the chapel that were changed every so often, and one day I finally asked someone why they were changed and what the different colors meant. I learned about the concept of the Liturgical Calendar, with Lent and Advent and Ordinary Time. The organization of the thing was fascinating and new, and added pieces to the puzzle of the connection between Christmas and Easter. 

For those of you unfamiliar with the Liturgical Calendar, it goes a like this: Advent is the beginning, the four weeks before Christmas. The “Christmas Season” is actually the 12 days from December 25 to January 6 which is Epiphany, traditionally the day the Wise Men arrived in Bethlehem to see the Christ Child. After this there is a small period of Ordinary Time, the lull between Christmas and Lent. Many cultures celebrate Carnivale, or Mardi Gras, right before the beginning of Lent, which is the 6 weeks leading up to Easter. Lent begins with Ash Wednesday. Then we have Passion Sunday, or Palm Sunday, which is the Sunday before Easter. (This is the point in the year in which all the Baptists go, wait, Easter is NEXT SUNDAY?) Then there is Passion Week, which includes Maundy Thursday (the night Jesus partook of the Last Supper), Good Friday, and then Easter Sunday. The Easter Season is the 6 weeks after this, ending with Pentecost. Then we are in Ordinary Time for the next several months. The banners in the chapel were purple for Advent and Lent, red for Passion week, white for Easter Sunday, purple for Easter Season (I think) and then green for Ordinary Time.

During our 7 years in Italy we celebrated many Easters at the chapel, including several Sunrise Services. The most blessed Easter season for me was the year I subbed as the sound tech.

This was also the year I had given up chocolate for Lent. The first week of that experiment was miserable…chocolate was EVERYWHERE and unavoidable. But the longer I went without it, the less I missed it, and I found myself walking down the candy aisle of the commissary thinking “If Jesus endured 6 hours on the cross and three days in the tomb, I can go 6 weeks without chocolate.” Somehow this first “giving up” made the Passion more real still, as it was something I was doing intentionally with a specific reminder that Jesus Died For Me. 

Each night of Holy Week I was at the chapel early in the evening, helping Father Mike set up for service and making sure everything was in working order. I was allowed to join in with the walking of the Stations of the Cross, something else I had never done before. Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, even Midnight Mass, I was there, celebrating the Passion of the Christ with my fellow believers. I remember the exhilaration of being able to eat a piece of chocolate cake at the fellowship after Midnight Mass. Lent was over, after all…it was Easter Sunday even if it was only 12:30 in the morning. A few hours later the pianist (who had also been there every evening) and I greeted each other with exhausted waves at the Sunrise Service. Christ the Lord is risen today. Haaaaa-le-lu-ia! 

It was a beautiful service, that Easter morning of 2010. It was my last truly wonderful Easter.