Другое : Easter (Пасха)
Easter (Пасха)
Plan.
I.
The
moral lessons given us by Jesus.
II.
When
is an Easter?
III. Eastertide.
IV. Easter
egg and Easter hare.
V.
Thoughts
from Ireland.
VI. Easter
in England.
VII. Easter
in Ukraine and Russia
I. The moral lessons given us by Jesus.
Celebrating Easter, seeing the happy faces of people
around, hearing the joyful announcements “Christ is risen”, and, on the whole,
enjoining these God-blessed sunny spring days, let us pause for a moment and
ponder on some of the moral lessons given us by Jesus.
We well know that Christianity is ethical through
and through, but strange as it may seem, the moral teaching of Christ himself
is not very circumstantial. On the contrary, He appears rather terse on these
matters, and it is in His deeds, not words, that the larger part of His mission
found its expression. As a person, with all His inclinations and intentions, He
does not seem to be a determined moral reformer, not to speak of a
revolutionary; and he was not in the least a scholar or a man of letters. He
wrote nothing. He mowed quietly and slowly along the highways and among the
villages of Galilee and Judea and spoke to people not about any intricate
problems of human existence, or theology, or the mysteries of life and death,
but about things which belonged to the realm of daily life; and the words he
chose for that were the words of common men, not those of a professor of
ethics.
He summed up His
“theology” in an amazingly short and simple phrase “God is love”; and meeting
people He very often did not teach them, as He actually did from time to time,
but offered them a ready sympathy and understanding, even to the degraded and
the outcast. To them He spoke in the language of tolerance and benevolence,
forgiveness and mercy. That was His love – and that was the beginning of the
moral revolution that transformed the world.
II. When is a Easter?
The greatest Christian
festival of the year is Easter. It is either in March or in April, and millions
of people joyously observe Christ’s resurrection. This holy day never comes
before March 22 or after April 25.
When is an Easter? That,
of course, is celebrated on the first Sunday after the paschal moon, which is
the first full moon that occurs on or next after the vernal equinox, March, 21st.
So all you need to do is look at the sky? Afraid not. For the moon in question
is not the real moon, but a hypothetical moon. This one goes round the earth
one month in 29 days, the next in 30 days, though with certain modifications to
make the date of both the real and fictional full moons coincide as nearly as
possible. It yields a date for Easter that can be as early as March 22nd
and as late as April 25th. Today, Easters variability suits
antiquarians, and the makers of pocket diaries, many of which devote a Full
page to the calculation of Easter in perpetuity. But, nearly 1,700 years on, it
does not suit those in (mostly European) countries such as Britain and Germany
where both Good Friday and Easter Monday are public holidays. Early Easters are
too cold to enjoy. Late Easters are jammed up against the May Day public
holiday.
III. Eastertide.
Passion Sunday or Care
Sunday two Sundays before Easter, is still known as Carling Sunday in parts of
the north of England. Carlings are small dried peas, which are soaked in water
overnight and then fried in an almost dry pan – when they start to burst they
are ready. Greengrocers sell them, pubs serve them, and people eat them at home
in a basin with a small piece of butter and plenty of pepper and salt. There
seems to be no good reason, apart from the strength of the tradition, why they
are eaten on this day.
Palm Sunday is the Sunday
before Easter; for people near Marlborough in Wiltshire it meant following a
long-established custom in which willow hazel sprays – representing palm – were
carried up Martinsell Hill.
Maundy Thursday is the
Thursday before Easter: the ‘royal maundy’ describes the gift which for the
last five hundred ears or so has been given out by the sovereign on Maundy
Thursday to as many men and woman as there are years in his or her age. Once it
was clothing which was given out, now it is a sum of money; on odd – numbered
years the ceremony usually takes place at Westminster Abbey, in even – numbered
ones at a church or cathedral elsewhere in the country – though 1989 seems to
have been an exception, for the distribution took place at Birmingham Cathedral
in honor of the centenary of the city’s incorporation.
On Good Friday, the day of the crucifixion, hot cross
buns are always eaten as a sign of remembrance, and in some baker’s shops and
supermarkets they are on sale for many weeks before. It is a nationwide
tradition, though hot cross buns were unknown in some places – Bath, for
example – until the twentieth century. The buns may in fact pre – date
Christianity, since bread consecrated to the Roman gods was marked with lines
intersecting at right angels.
People celebrate the
holiday according to the beliefs and their religious denominations. Christians
commemorate Good Friday as the day that Jesus Christ died and Easter Sunday as
the day that He was resurrected. Protestant settlers brought the custom of a
sunrise service, a religious gathering at dawn, to the United States.
Today on Easter Sunday,
children wake up to find that the Easter Bunny has left them baskets of candy.
He has also hidden the eggs that they decorated earlier that week. Children
hunt for the eggs all around the house. Neighborhoods and organizations hold
Easter egg hunts, and the child who finds the most eggs wins a prize.
In England, children
rolled eggs down hills on Easter morning, a game which has been connected to
the rolling away of the rock from Jesus Christ’s tomb when He was resurrected.
British settlers brought this custom to the New World.
One unusual Easter Sunday
tradition can be seen at Radley, near Oxford, where parishioners ‘clip’ or
embrace their church – they join hands and make a human chain round it. It is
Easter Monday, however, which sees a veritable wealth of traditional
celebrations throughout the country: to name bat’ a few, there is morris
dancing in many tows, including a big display at Thaxted in Essex; orange
rolling, perhaps a descendant of egg roiling, which takes place on Dunstable
Downs in Bedfordshire; and for perhaps eight hundred years or more there has
been a distribution of food at the Kent village of Biddenden, ten miles from
Ashford.
Then there is
Leicestershire’s famous hare – pie scramble and bottle – kicking which also
takes place on Easter Monday; and another custom kept up in many parts of
England and Wales and called ‘lifting’ or ‘heaving’ was taken by some to
symbolize Christ’s resurrection. On Easter Monday the men lifted any woman they
could find, and the women reciprocated the following day; the person was taken
by the four limbs and lifted three times to shoulder height. When objections
were made that this was ‘a rude, indecent and dangerous diversion’ a chair
bedecked with ribbons and flowers was used instead – it was lifted with its
victim, turned three times, and put down.
The Easter parade.
The origin of this very
picturesque traditional occasion, known affectionately as Easter Parade and
starting at 3 o’clock in the afternoon of Easter Sunday, is not as remote, or
mysterious, as many of the traditions and customs of England; there is no
religious, or superstitious significance attached to it whatsoever.
In 1858 Queen Victoria
gave it the ultimate cachet of respectability and class by paying it a state
visit in the spring. For the occasion she wore, of course, a new spring bonnet
and gown. This set the fashion for a display each spring of the newest fashions
in millinery and gowns, and from then onwards that traditions has expanded;
every society lady vied with her rivals to appear in something more spectacular
than anything that had seen before.
IV. Easter egg and Easter hare.
An egg has a symbolical
meaning in many centuries. It’s well known that eggs had a special significance
even in the times of ancient Romans. Eggs were their first disk during meals
(“ab ovo”) and they were also in the center of competition as a memory of Zeus’s
sons, who hatched from eggs. Such competition took place in France, Germany,
and Switzerland. Eggs was a sign of hope, life fertility even in the early
epoch. In Christianity, the Lord’s gift, which has begun in Jesus Christ. Eggs’
spreading as the Easter symbols turned to be possible because they sewed as an
original rent or as a tax. The Easter was one of the days when this pay could
be accomplished.
Excavations witness that
traditions of paintings on eggs have been existing for 5000 years and have their
regional peculiarities. Especially in Slavonic countries eggs are decorated
with many colored pictures of Christian motives. As expensive souvenirs it was
a habit to give eggs made of noble metals, marble, was and wood.
The Easter hare, which,
children believe, brings the Easter eggs, may be understood as a transformed
Easter lamb. In those places, where there was no sheepbreeding, a hare
substituted for a sheep in the Raster meal. Due to its ability not to sleep the
hare become a symbol of resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Easter Eggs.
Wherever Easter is
celebrated, there Easter eggs are usually to be found. In their modern form,
they are frequently artificial, mere imitations of the real thing, made of
chocolate or marzipan or sugar, or of two pieces of coloured and decorated
cardboard fitted together to make an eggs-shaped case containing some small
gift. These are the Easter eggs of commerce, which now appear in shop-windows
almost as soon as, and sometimes even before, Ash Wednesday is past, and by so doing
lose much of their original festival significance.
This is a real egg,
hard-boiled, died in bright colours, and sometimes elaborately decorated. In
still appears upon countless breakfast-tables on Eater Day, or is hidden about
the house and garden for the children to find. In some European countries,
including England, the Easter Hare is said to bring the Easter eggs, and to
conceal them in odd corners of the gardens, stables, or outbuildings.
Because eggs are obvious
symbols of continuing life and resurrection, the pagan peoples of ancient
China, Egypt, Greece, and Persia used them, centuries before tile first Easter
Day, at the great Spring Festivals, when the revival of all things in Nature
was celebrated.
Colouring and decorating
the festival eggs seems to have been customary since time immemorial. And old
Polish legend says that Our Lady herself painted eggs red, blue, and green to
amuse the Infant Jesus, and that since then all good polish mothers have done
the same at Easter. A Romanian tale says that the vivid red shade, which is a
favorite almost everywhere, represents the blood of Christ.
There are many ways of
tinting and decorated the eggs, some simple and some requiring a high degree of
skill. They can be dipped into a prepared dye or, more usually boiled in it, or
they may be boiled inside a covering of onion-peel. Ordinary commercial dyes
are often used today for coloring, but originally only natural ones, obtained
from flowers, leaves, mosses, bark, wood-chips, or other sources, were employed.
In England, gorse-blossom was commonly used for yellow, cochineal for scarlet,
and logwood-chips for a rich purple.
In Switzerland, minute
flowers and leaves are sometimes laid on the egg underneath the onion-peel to
make a white flower-pattern on the yellow or brown surface.
The decoration of Easter
eggs is a traditional peasant art in Eastern and Central Europe. Favorite
designs vary in different regions. In Hungary, red flower-patterns on a white
ground are often seen; sometimes the decorated eggs are fitted with tiny metal
shoes, with minute spurs attached, and curious little metal hangers. In
Yugoslavia, the letters XV usually form part of the design. They stand for
Christos Vaskrese, meaning ‘Christ is risen’, which is the traditional Easter
greeting of Easter Europe. Russian eggs are sometimes elaborately decorated
with miniature picture of the saints, or of Our Lord. Polish designs are often
geometrical, or abstract, or they may include Christian symbols, like the Gross
or Fish, mixed with pagan emblems of new life. Painted eggs of this type, know
as pisanki, always appear on the Easter Table.
In some East European
countries, scarlet eggs, as symbols of resurrection, are placed on, or buried
in, the graves of the family dead. The latter custom was known in northern
England until about the middle of last century. One or two of the most
beautifully ornamented Pace-eggs – the name by which Easter eggs are still most
commonly called in the northern counties – would be saved and kept in tall ale
– glasses in a corner cupboard, or some other place where they could be easily
seen. In Scotland, Easter eggs are often called Peace or Paiss eggs. ‘Pace’ and
‘Paiss’ are all corruptions of Pasch, or Paschal, of which the original root is
the Hebrew word pisach meaning Passover.
In parts of Germany
during the early 1880s, Easter eggs substituted for birth certificates. An egg
was dyed a solid color, then a design, which included the recipient’s name and
birth date, was etched into the shell with a needle or sharp tool. Such Easter
eggs were honored in law courts as evidence of identity and age.
Easter Bunny.
That a rabbit, or more accurately a
hare, became a holiday symbol can be traced to the origin of the word “Easter”.
According to the Venerable Bede, the English historian who lived from 672 to
735, the goddess Easter was worshiped by the Anglo – Saxons through her earthly
symbol, the hare.
The custom of the Easter
hare came to America with the Germans who immigrated to Pennsylvania in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
From Pennsylvania, they
gradually spread out to Virginia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, New
York, and Canada, taking their customs with them. Most eighteenth – century
Americans, however, were of more austere religious denominations, such as
Quaker, Presbyterian, and Puritan. They virtually ignored such a seemingly
frivolous symbol as a white rabbit. More than a hundred years passed before
this Teutonic Easter tradition began to gain acceptance in America. In fact, it
was not until after the Civil War, with its Legacy of death and destruction,
that the nation as a whole began a widespread observance of Easter it self, led
primarily by Presbyterians. They viewed the story of resurrection as a source
of inspiration and renewed hope for the millions of bereaved Americans.
V. Thoughts from Ireland.
By tradition, Good Friday
has always been a day of mourning and fasting, for decorating churches with
branches of yew (palm) and other evergreens, and the ceremonial distribution of
gifts to the poor.
Many Christians fast and
attend services between noon and 3 p. m., the hours Jesus is believed to have
spent on the cross, since the day commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus.
On Easter Sunday the
churches are beautifully decorated with white lilies. Joyful religious music is
heard and sermons ring with hope. Children and their parents traditionally
attend church, usually wearing new spring clothes. The mothers and their
daughters wear colorful flowered hats. Many other traditions and popular customs,
which probably go back to pagan times, are also associated with Easter
throughout Europe, for example, the sending of Easter cards and the giving of
Easter eggs. Eggs are a symbol of life and fertility or recreation of spring.
It was not however until the 19th century, that the practice of
giving and exchanging eggs at Easter was introduced in England.
Easter custom, the barrels are gratefully emptied by
the participants. In London there is Easter Parade in Battersea Park. What used
to be merely an occasion for sporting the latest fashions in the park on Easter
Sunday has now developed into one of the most spectacular carnival processions
of the year, with military bands, decorated floats, Easter Princess, and all.
Another thing English
people traditionally eat at Easter is hot cross-buns. One would hardly use them
to cure whooping cough, but in bygone days buns, which had been baked on Good
Friday, were thought to have magical healing powers. Because of the spices they
contain, hot cross-buns seldom go moldy, and even today country housewives hang
a few from the kitchen beams to dry. When needed, the buns can be powdered,
mixed with milk or water and given as a medicine. Of course, for the magic cure
to work, they have to be buns that were actually baked on Good Friday. For
Easter dinners at family reunions Englishmen traditionally eat baked ham or
chicken with a famous English apple-pie to follow/
For a good apple pie you
will need:
1 lb apples (500 gm)
4 oz flour (100 gm)
2 oz butter or margarine
(50 gm)
3 oz sugar (75 gm)
2 oz sultans (50 gm)
1 oz chopped nuts (25 gm)
1-teaspoon cinnamon.
Now you can make a real
English apple – pie. Here are the instructions. Put them in the correct order,
and number the instructions 1 to 6:
Mix the nuts, sultanas,
cinnamon and half the sugar with the apples. Bake in a medium oven (300F) for
30 minutes. Peel and core the apples. Cut them into small pieces and put them
into a baking dish. Sieve the flour into a mixing bowl. Sprinkle the mixture
over the apples.
Rub the soft butter into
the flour with your finger – tips. When the butter melts, the mixture will look
like bread – crumbs. Add the rest of the sugar. And now serve the pie hot with
cream. Enjoy it! And as Russians say, Christ is risen! Expecting the
answer, Christ is risen indeed!
VI. Easter in England.
Easter it is a time for
the giving and receiving of presents which traditionally take the form of an
Easter egg and hot cross buns. The Easter egg is by far the most popular emblem
of Easter, but fluffy little chicks, baby rabbits and spring time flowers like
daffodils, dangling catkins and the arum lily are also used to signify the
Nature's awakening.
Nowadays Easter eggs are
usually made of chocolate or marzipan or sugar. True Easter eggs are
hard-boiled, dyed in bright colours, and sometimes elaborately decorated.
Colouring and decorating the festival eggs seems to have been customary since
time immemorial They can be dipped into a prepared dye or, more usually, boiled
in it, or they may be boiled inside a covering of onion peel Natural dyes are
often used for coloring today. They are obtained from flowers, leaves, mosses,
bark, and wood-chips.
Egg-rolling is a
traditional Easter pastime which still flourishes in Britain. It takes place on
Easter Sunday or Monday, and consists of rolling coloured, hard-boiled eggs
down a slope until they are cracked and broken after which they are eaten by
their owners. In some districts this is a competitive game. But originally
egg-rolling provided an opportunity for divination. Each player marked his or
her egg with an identifying sign and then watched to see how it sped down the
slope. If it reached the bottom unscathed, the owner could expect good luck in
the future, but if it was broken, unfortune would follow before the year was
out, Eating hot cross buns at breakfast on Good Friday morning is a custom
which is also flourishing in most English households. Formerly, these round,
cakes marked with a cross, eaten hot, were made by housewives who rose at dawn;
for the purpose, or by local bakers who worked through the night to have them
ready for delivery to their customers in time for breakfast. There is an old
belief that the true Good Friday bun — that is, one made on the anniversary
itself — never goes moldy, if kept in a dry place. It was once also supposed to
have curative powers, especially for ailments like dysentery, diarrhea,
whooping cough, and the complaint known as "summer sickness". Within
living memory, it was still quite usual in country districts for a few buns to
be hung from the kitchen ceiling until, they are needed. When illness came the
bun was finely grated and mixed with milk or water, to make a medicine, which
the patient drank.
VIII.
Easter in Ukraine and Russia.
In Ukrainian, Easter is
called Velikden (The Great Day). It has been celebrated over a long period of
history and has many rich folk traditions that are no longer fully preserved.
The last Sunday before Easter (Palm Sunday) is called Willow Sunday (Verbna
nedilia). On this day pussy-willow branches are blessed in the church. The
people tap one another with these branches, repeating the wish: ‘Be as tall as
the willow, as healthy as the water, and as rich as the earth’.
The week before Easter,
the Great Week (Holy Week), is called the White or Pure Week. During this time
an effort is made to finish all fieldwork before Thursday, since from Thursday
on work is forbidden. On the evening of ‘Pure’ (also called ‘Great’ or
‘Passion’ [Strasnyi]) Thursday, the passion (strasti) service is performed,
after which the people return home with lighted candles. Maundy Thursday,
called ‘the Eater of the dead’ in eastern Ukraine and Russia, is connected with
the cult of the dead, who are believed to meet in the church on that night for
the Divine Mass.
On Passion (Strasna) Friday
– Good Friday – no work is done. In some localities, the Holy Shroud
(plashchanytsia) is carried solemnly three times around the church and, after
appropriate services, laid out for public veneration. For three days the
community celebrates to the sound of bells and to the singing of spring songs –
vesnianky. Easter begins with the Easter matins and high mass, during which the
pasky (traditional Easter breads) and pysanky and krashanky (decorated or
colored Easter eggs) are blessed in the church. Butter, lard, cheese,
roast-suckling pigs, sausage, smoked meat, and little napkins containing poppy
seeds, millet, salt, pepper, and horseradish are also blessed. After the matins
all the people in the congregation exchange Easter greetings, give each other krashanky,
and then hurry home with their baskets of blessed food.
The pysanky and krashanky
are an old pre-Christian element and have an important role in the Eater rites.
They are given as gifts or exchanged as a sign of affection, and their shells
are put in water for the rakhmany (peaceful souls); finally, they are placed on
the graves of the dead or buried in graves and the next day are taken out and
given to the poor. Related to the exchange of krashanky is the rite of
sprinkling with water, which is still carried on in Western Ukraine. During the
Easter season in Ukraine and Russia the cult of the dead is observed. The dead
are remembered on Maundy Thursday and also during the whole week after Easter.
For the commemoration of the dead (provody) the people gather in the cemetery
by the church, bringing with them a dish containing some food and liquor or
wine, which they consume, leaving the rest at the graves.
Список литературы.
1. Газета “The English”, April №14/1996.
2.
Газета “The English”, March №12/1997.
3.
Газета “The English”, March №12/1995.
4.
Газета “English Learner’s digest”, April,
1995.
5.
Газета “English Learner’s digest”, April,
1997.
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