Eschewmenical Presents: Easter!

Welcome to another month on Eschewmenical. This month’s topic is Easter. Culturally associated with eggs decorated lavishly in pastels, bunnies, chicks and delicious sugar coated marshmallows shaped like the aforementioned bunnies and chicks, Easter is the time we as Christians remember the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Easter is an odd holiday as the date that it is celebrated varies widely from year to year. The decision to move Easter was made out of an attempt to line the day up with the Jewish celebration of Passover. According to Wikipedia, it is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere Source.

Celebrations of Easter range from the 50 day celebration of the Catholics to the almost complete ignoring of the day by people who consider it to be a continuation of a tradition of paganism.

We’ve handled several Easter questions on Christianity.StackExchange and covered a range of issues from how long Jesus was in the tomb to how we determine the date it’s celebrated.

This month’s authors and topics are:

• 4/2: Bruce Alderman (United Methodist—Holy Week: From Palm Sunday to Easter)
• 4/9: Jon Ericson (Evangelical—Easter as a historical event)
• 4/16 Peter Turner (Catholic—pro-Easter (as a 50 day celebration))
• 4/23: Michael Hollinger (aka Affable Geek) (Episcopalian — Why we need Good Friday)
• 4/30: Dan O’Day (The Eastern Perspective)

Please keep in mind that we are here in the spirit of Eschewmenism; we’ve agreed to disagree.