Easter holidays

“ This weekend, many of our service men and women are celebrating the holidays far from home. They are separated from their families by great distances, but they are always close in our thoughts. And this Passover and Easter, I ask you to keep them in your prayers. ”

“ And if we care to go farther back we find credited to the folk festival the origin of language, music and poetry—those cultural joy-inspiring powers and possessions that made the race human.
Before Christianity there were the midwinter holidays expressive of the joy of returning warmth and longer days; and Easter, too, celebrating the fresh glow of life in grass and tree ; and Thanksgiving and Harvest Home, as a grateful recognition of accumulated Winter store. Christianity could only enrich the meaning with which these were already fraught. ”

“ And tomorrow, my family will join Christians around the world as we thank God for the all-important gift of grace through the resurrection of His son, and experience the wonder of Easter morning. These holidays have their roots in miracles that took place thousands of years ago. They connect us to our past and give us strength as we face the future. And they remind us of the common thread of humanity that connects us all. ”

“ It was the week after the Easter holidays, and he was journeying along with Smart the mare and the light spring-cart, watching the damp slopes of the hill-sides as they streamed in the warmth of the sun, which at this unsettled season shone on the grass with the freshness of an occasional inspector rather than as an accustomed proprietor. ”

“ An Austrian official report on over-pressure in the public schools recommends as a remedy for the evil, which is pronounced real, a better division of the holidays by giving longer vacations at Christmas and at Easter ”

“ I am persuaded, so thoroughly did they all enjoy their own carolling, that the singing of noëls would have gone on until broad daylight had it not been for the intervention of the midnight mass. But the mass of Christmas Eve—or, rather, of Christmas morning—is a matter not only of pleasure but of obligation. Even those upon whom churchly requirements at other times rest [119] lightly rarely fail to attend it; and to the faithful it is the most touchingly beautiful—as Easter is the most joyous—church festival of the year. ”

“ EVERYTHING awakens with new life and rejoices on Easter; and the dear old Earth smiles with sympathy and brings her offering of sweet flowers. It is the day when all people, little and big, young and old, should be filled with joy, because Easter means the Resurrection. ”

“ It was a glorious sparkling Easter Day, lovely blue sky above, herbage and flowers glistening below, snow dazzling in the hollows, peasants assembling in holiday garb, and all rejoicing. Even the lonely widow, in her heavy veil and black mufflings, took hope back to her heart, and smiled when at the church door a little child came timidly up to her with a madder-tinted Easter egg—a gift once again like the happy home customs of Ulm. ”

“ This Festival is the counterpart of Easter—telling of Death, as Easter does of Resurrection; and as God has given to the latter, the reviving blossom and the sweet Spring-time; so He has set the former in the Autumn, and strewed the sere leaves in our path to Church, as its becoming symbol. ”

“ ON EASTER DAY.
WE light the Easter fire, and the Easter lamps we trim,
And lilies rear their chaliced cups in churches rich and dim,
And chapel low and Minster high the same triumphant strains
In city and in village raise, and on the lonely plains.
“Life” is the strain, and “endless life” the chiming bells repeat,—
A word of victory over death, a word of promise sweet;
And as the great good clasps the less, the sun a myriad rays,
So do a hundred thoughts of joy cling round our Easter days. ”

“ Easter-tide, or the week following Easter, was a period of such exuberant merry-making that the people popularly imagined that their own mood was shared by the heavenly bodies, and believed that the sun actually danced with joy on the day of the Resurrection. ”

“ When the snows began to melt, the children and young people heralded the approach of Spring with song. Joining hands, they wandered singing in the twilight, a lovely, living chain of Youth in its Spring-time. They repeated these songs at Easter, that wonderful festival of Resurrection and the rebirth of Nature. On Holy Thursday the Gospels were read in the churches until midnight, and everyone carried a taper. My mother’s estates were situated in the mountains, and it was a picturesque sight when the peasants wended their way churchwards at Easter. ”

“ Is there a cold, resentful bank wherein the late snow lingers that shall not finally cast off its disdainful ice and flash into verdure in response to the patient shining of the sun? Is there a grave in all the land so new and desolate that Easter time cannot find a violet among its clods and paint a rainbow within the tears that rain above it? To nature's lovers, then, as to the truly [27] Christian heart, the significance of Easter is found in the reviving garden and in the awakening woods. ”

“ This Easter sun will rise on you, dear child, "feeling your life in every limb," and eager to rush out into the fresh morning air——and many an Easter-day will come and go, before it finds you feeble and gray-headed, creeping wearily out to bask once more in the sunlight——but it is good, even now, to think sometimes of that great morning when the "Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings." ”

“ Probably the Easter celebration is like that at Christmas and Thanksgiving—a survival of some ancient pagan rite that men established out of overflowing hearts, rejoicing at the end of a good season and praying for favour at the beginning of a new one. ”

“ The day of its arrival they call their Easter, and they do not hold Easter according to the calendar in the dark and terrible spring, but postpone their holiday till life is born again with the coming of the ship. ”

“ To the Christian world Easter symbolises a Divine tragedy. The coming of Easter, as it is set forth in the Great Book, is a most powerful story; it is the story of one of the deepest passions that may move the human heart—the passion of father-love. ”

“ All the fine spring bonnets of Easter-Sunday do not prove the youth of every face under them, and I wonder whether this splendid celebration of Easter means that you are a more religious people than in the plainer Easter days that I remember. ”

“ However, Lent once passed, with its sewing circles and small whist-parties, then comes the brilliant Easter, with its splendid dinners, its weddings, its christenings and caudle parties, its ladies' lunches, its Meadow Brook hunt, its asparagus parties, and the chickens of gayety which are hatched out of Easter eggs. It is a great day for the confectioner. ”

“ She is not, like Spring, a vagrant, wand'ring, care-free, here and there. Easter has a field for sowing, Easter has her goal in sight, Lenten lilies all ablowing, glorify her day and night. 'Tis the heart that Easter's seeking. There she'll sow her precious seed. Hark! 'tis Easter sweetly speaking, "I have come for your great need." Heart that is bowed down with sorrow, tree that is now bare of leaf, wait with patience; for the morrow brings an end to winter's grief. Easter's such a gentle maiden, trees for her will bud again. Hearts with sorrow, heavy laden, are, by Easter, healed of pain. ”

“ Easter, the anniversary of our Lord’s Resurrection from the dead, is one of the three great festivals of the Christian year—the other two being Christmas and Whitsuntide. From the earliest period of Christianity down to the present day, it has always been celebrated by believers with the greatest joy, and accounted the queen of festivals. ”

“ SIR,—The suggestion of your Correspondent "EASTER EGG," who wishes Easter to be a fixed festival, always coming on April 20, is excellent. At present, Easter-tide, like the other tide, depends on the moon. ”

“ Again, Christmas now comes before the lengthening of the day is sufficiently apparent to give one the feeling of having left the dark time behind, and generally before the frost and snow have had a chance. Easter, being a moveable festivity, is not affected ”

“ Far from this foreign Easter damp and chilly
⁠My soul steals to a pear-shaped plot of ground,
Where gleamed the lilac-tinted Easter lily
⁠Soft-scented in the air for yards around;
Alone, without a hint of guardian leaf! ”

“ The church makes up amply in the Easter festival for any lack of participation at New Year. Forty-eight days of rigid lenten abstinence, during which time no meat is eaten, precede the festivities of Easter Day. The first two or three days of the Holy Week are given over to housecleaning, which however must be finished by Thursday in order that the people may attend the ceremonies at church which continue until Easter Day. ”

“ Easter with its spirit of hopefulness, Thanksgiving with its bounty of turkey, or even Christmas with all its cheer and good will, does not, for some reason, reach the same depths of the boy nature as does the boom and sizz of fire crackers. ”

“ One can just sit without a fire. Presently, all will be green and gay; for winter is here the season of flowers, and the heaths will cover the country with a vast Turkey carpet. Already the green is appearing where all was brown yesterday. To-day is Good Friday; and if Christmas seemed odd at Midsummer, Easter in autumn seems positively unnatural. ”

“ Would Easter ever begin, that long-coveted vacation when the growing boy, according to theory, goes home to rest from the fatiguing draining of his brain, but in reality returns exhausted by dinners, dances, and theatres, with perhaps a little touch of the measles to exchange with his neighbours. ”

“ All, all the dead, the near, the far, take part in Easter day!
They share the life we hope to share, as once they shared in this;
They hold in fast possession our heritage of bliss.
Theirs is the sure, near Presence toward which we reach and strain;
On Easter day, on Easter day, we all are one again.
Oh, fairest of the fair, high thoughts that light the Easter dawn!
Oh, sweet and true companionship which cannot be withdrawn!
“The Lord is risen!” sealed lips repeat out of the shadows dim;
“The Lord is risen,” we answer back, “and all shall rise in him!” ”

“ It is quite true that almost every Easter Sunday morning in our parts we have fine, bright sunshine, but this is due to the fact that at that season of the year everything in the ground is springing out fresh and green, and the warm heat of summer is approaching. When I was a little boy of about nine or ten years of age, I was often told that if I got up very early on Easter Sunday morning, I would see the sun dancing with a lamb, a cross, and a bird on its face. ”

“ If Easter is developed in a celebration of song or procession, of sermon and of decoration, with full use of its symbolic value, it is sure to bring the whole countryside together, in an experience of the New Year rising from the grave of winter and of the divine Lord risen from the dead. ”

“ Our Easter joy, I fear, is woefully conventional, inspired perhaps by the genial breath of spring, or the consciousness that fasting and sackcloth have given way to feasting and the respectability of brand-new clothes, Easter rejoicings, my Brethren, should be more thoughtful, more rational. ”

“ Through the wondrous Sabbath of faithful souls, the long day of rosemary and rue, the light brightens in the East; and we pass on towards it with quiet feet and opening eyes, bearing with us all of the redeemed earth that we have made our own, until we are fulfilled in the sunrise of the great Easter Day, and the peoples come from north and south and east and west to the City which lieth foursquare—the Beatific Vision of God. ”

“ Easter owes its origin not to human wisdom, or piety: it comes to us with higher sanctions.
Easter is the chief festival of Christendom, the first and oldest of all festivals, the basis on which the Church’s [38] year is built, the connecting link with the festivals of the Old Covenant, and the central point on which depends the date of the other movable feasts. ”

“ Workworn and old, who labours day by day,
Who has no rest, no joy to call her own,
My tasks, my heart, had much the lighter grown.
EASTER April 1, 1888
Lent gathers up her cloak of sombre shading
In her reluctant hands.
Her beauty heightens, fairest in its fading,
As pensively she stands
Awaiting Easter's benediction falling,
Like silver stars at night,
Before she can obey the summons calling
Her to her upward flight,
Awaiting Easter's wings that she must borrow
Ere she can hope to fly—
Those glorious wings that we shall see to-morrow
Against the far, blue sky. ”

“ Easter is the promise of the Lord that all the best and [364] noblest in man shall be renewed, even as growth and bloom and ripening shall not cease. The bars of winter are broken, and the iron bands of death are riven. The bird is on the wing and the flight of the soul shall know no weariness. The lilies lift their holy white grails brimmed with the sunshine of God’s love. For, has not the Lord manifested His love in flowers and in the upspringing of green things? ”

“ One day, when a glorious Easter-morning dawned, a day on which he had once been wont to see joyous throngs making pilgrimage to his castle, he felt so ashamed of his downfall that he had not even heart to go to church, and was perplexed how to pass the bright sunny feast-days. ”

“ When the question relative to the sacred festival of Easter arose, it was universally thought that it would be convenient that all should keep the feast on one day; for what could be more beautiful and more desirable, than to see this festival, through which we receive the hope of immortality, celebrated by all with one accord, and in the same manner? ”