Easter Continued: Holy Thursday

Continuing with Holy Week, today is the observance of Holy Thursday. Today Christians celebrate the Last Supper before the death of Christ on Good Friday. Holy Thursday (also known as Maundy Thursday) commemorates 3 things: the washing of the Apostles' feet, the Eucharist (Communion, Sacrament) instituted by Christ, and the betrayal of Judas Iscariot. Services are held in the evenings and there is a washing of feet ceremony along with another reading of the Passion of our Lord.

A really neat tradition is baking of the Easter bread for Easter Sunday. In Europe they bake Easter bread on Holy Thrusday so it will be ready for the following Sunday. The bread is usually a yeasty egg bread. In the Greek tradition whole dyed eggs are baked with the bread. They are usually colored red which symbolizes the blood of Christ. The egg itself symbolizes new life. The bread can be braided in a wreath shape or left as a braided rope. They also make Byzantine crosses with the a little of the dough that is baked on top of the loaf. It is really a neat, beautiful, and delicious tradition. That is why I decided I was going to try it out this Easter. But instead of baking the bread today (which is the tradition), I am going to bake it on Friday. Daniel and I thought it would be fun and appropriate to color eggs, bake bread, assemble Easter baskets for our families, and read the story of our Savior's death on Friday evening. I will have to take pictures of our bread making and egg dyeing and post them up soon.


So I have been thinking about some things, prompted by some stories Daniel told me and here is one of my thoughts:
It is funny, I think that some people get really caught up with the fact that the major Christian holidays (Christmas and Easter) have so many pagan starts and traditions woven into them. While that is true, I don't believe that we need to stop celebrating them because of some thought that we might be doing pagan things. An example is the eggs on Easter. To the ancients, eggs symbolized a regeneration (which happens in the spring time) and fertility. That symbol of the egg has been adopted by Chrisitians to also symbolize a new life, but a new life in Christ. Symbols are really only symbols when we believe them to symbolize whatever they are symbolizing --ok, sorry for that sentence, but I don't know how to say it in another way.:)
Ok, so the point I am trying to make is that symbols can change and we don't have to get caught up in the fact that the Easter Bunny was a pagan symbol for fertilty or that the date for Christmas really was the commemoration of some sun god(emphasis on "was"). What we have is what those holidays mean to us and how we can draw closer to our Savior during those times. Now, we also don't need to make the Easter bunny central to what Easter means to us. We don't have to follow what the stores say should be emphasized for Easter or Christmas. We really can make our own traditions. when I thought about all of this, I looked back onto my childhood and what my family emphasized for those holidays. Yes, we had the gift-giving and the egg hunts, but we also had the church services we went to, focus on Lent and other Holy times and days, and time with family. Daniel's family always read the story of Christ's birth on Christmas, or Christmas Eve. Daniel and I have been adopting this tradition for Christmas and Easter which has a lot of meaning for us. These traditions and meanings that came from our families really shaped us and carried us through till now. It is really neat how most of us are new families with a small child or children on the way, and we have the opportunity to set or carry on traditions for our families today.

It is really hard especially with school and work and other obligations, but I hope that we can all really set some fun and meaningful traditions for our families (whether for these important holidays, or other things) while we are young and starting out, it only gets harder the more we wait.

Hey, I have an idea, maybe we can all post on some favorite traditions we have from our families or that we just developed, it would be fun to read, I'm sure.