Easter Day
Today is Easter Day. Whether you belong to a church or not, you can hardly fail to be aware of this – the shops have been full of chocolate eggs and hot cross buns since Christmas. Between then and now they have sold greetings cards in honour of St Valentine and St Patrick, the ingredients for pancakes to celebrate Shrove Tuesday and presents for Mothering Sunday. One wonders how commercialism would survive without the church calendar. One good thing, however, is that today is also one of the very few Sundays in the year that shops (even garden centres) are not allowed to open.
Like me, you may remember Good Friday was the most boring day. There were no newspapers and cinemas would be closed. This year even bookmakers were open. The main meal always consisted of fish. Strangely the NHS seems to be the only institution that still considers fish to be the correct staple for any Friday. It is always on the menu in hospitals.
If your family were churchgoers you spent at least three hours at the Devotion. The church looked strangely sombre, no flowers or colourful frontal on the altar and the cross was draped in a black shroud, there was no music, nor even the trip to the chancel for blessing to relieve the boredom – Holy Communion was not taken on this day. As I got older I learned to love the time of meditation but as a child I was always being told off for fidgeting. When I knelt I was below the book rest on the back of the pew in front, unable to see but able trace the patterns in the wood with my finger. I can still feel the intricate carving of those ancient pew ends.
Two days later when we went to the Easter services the place would have been transformed. Daffodils were everywhere, and, if possible, pussy willow and hazel catkins – I cannot remember when I last saw either of these. One of my favourite bookmarks, still in my KJV, was given to me at Easter Sunday School about fifty years ago. It is a cross shaped card filled with pictures of violets and primroses, to me they are still the most beautiful of all flowers, better than costly orchids or hot-house roses. They signify Spring, hope, new life and the Easter message.
Somewhere in this frenetic twenty first century we seem to have lost sight of the fact that this is a more important festival even than Christmas. This movable feast we can fix by the phases of the moon and so, unlike Christmas, can be sure we are commemorating the supreme sacrifice and glorious resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ at the correct time. We should be shouting its wonder from the rooftops, thanking God with our whole being. As a sinless human he took all our sins to the cross and won, for us, salvation.
