Time Today . Easter’s Moveable Feast
My very first stuffed animal arrived when I was a newborn infant. I still have him. He’s threadbare— but never failing to do his job, which from the get go was more sentinel than much else. Hard as a rock with fur that was a close-cropped buzz cut, he stood forever the soldier at attention, ears always up, in bright red and chartreuse green. When I was barely old enough to understand naming, I was clear I already knew his proper name: “Bunny”. There was a point when I tried to cuddle with him and my other stuffed animals, about 9 of them lined up with their heads just above the covers so they could all breathe. Bunny was always right next to me, his long wired ears under my cheek, and I loved him and our happily silent conversations.
1. Easter is a welcome mystery to kids wherever it’s celebrated.
I remember it well… the Easter Bunny was a whole lot less serious than my own Bunny, pictured above. With barely a fraction of the pre-holiday fanfare of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny doesn’t bother to keep a list of who’s naughty or nice all year. He spreads gifts like crazy in just one night too, but he keeps it simple. He doesn’t ask what you want, he decides what you want, and he’s right: Candy in a handy basket. No muss, no fuss! Chocolate rabbits, chocolate eggs, and a few sweets even more insanely sugary, for good measure.
The Easter Bunny outdoes Santa’s speed, and just about doubles the stops he makes, without a sleigh or helpers at all! He hops nimbly to where kids sleep soundly in the wee hours, and then leaps over to grandmother’s house, where (at least in my childhood, because she lived one town away) he leaves full baskets for each of the grandkids he knows for sure want to come visit on Easter. (And yes, get more treats!)
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2. Who was that mystery rabbit?
The Germans call him Osterhase, and he started hanging out there in 1500, 1660, or 1700 depending on which account you read. He hopped on over to the United States courtesy of German immigrants who brought him along to Pennsylvania in the 1700’s. He enjoys a warm welcome everywhere, including the traditional Monday White House Easter Egg Roll, on April 1st in 2024.
Humanity has this fairly universal quirk: as soon as we succeed with a land grab by whatever means (war, commerce, royal marriages, etc.) we take over the feasts and holidays of the people we just overran and remake them as our own, fusing native and outsider cultures. Holiday meaning, sacred rituals, dates and traditions blend together in a soon forgotten mash-up of ancient meaning and new-fangled overlays, until the original ideas are muffled by history and the blurry annals of TIME. Oh, that pesky character TIME, always lurking in the shadows, watching like some Prime-Directive-Trekkie, not stopping us, just taking note of our foibles for some future about-face.
Ēostre (a more ancient Anglo-Saxon deity) was the original name for this feasting celebration, with nary a chocolate egg in sight. The feast honored her female energy and the fertility of Springtime, as well as the spirit of rejuvenation. She was always accompanied by a rabbit to symbolize this. Even the ancient Romans gave Venus a rabbit as one of her attributes, to symbolize sexual purity, as portrayed by artists during the Middle Ages and Renaissance (1400 and earlier).
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3. Meanwhile, our rabbit was busy with another ancient project in Japan.
Folklore tells us that several animals out for a walk came upon an old man who looked as poor as a beggar. So they decided to offer him some food to help. But the rabbit was so bereft of skills that he could neither climb trees for fruit nor hunt for prey. Instead, he built a fire and jumped in, ready to offer himself to feed the old man. Suddenly, the old man revealed his true stature as the ruling god Sakra; and he immediately saved the rabbit so he was not burnt. Resurrection, one theme of Western culture’s highest Easter meaning, surfaces here, too.
In thanks, Sakra drew the rabbit’s likeness on the Moon’s surface so others could be inspired by his selfless altruism. Some details of this story mention that the rabbit on the moon is pounding rice in a mortar to make the dessert called mochi. Not chocolate, yet it seems that wherever our rabbit travels across the world, sweetness follows.
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4. A Moveable Feast? Why doesn’t Easter stop hopping about and settle on one date?
We’d like to make sense of our calendars! Nope. TIME has fiddled with the holiday calendar, and here’s how it manages to keep us guessing: Known as a “computus,” essentially Easter occurs on the Sunday after the first Full Moon following the vernal equinox, now “stabilized” to March 21st (but 2024 is a Leap Year, so this year’s date was arbitrary, and that’s just whack) using the standard Gregorian calendar. Lead-up dates such as Mardi Gras and Lent are adjusted each year, too. Providing further proof of how deep the roots of Easter go, its date is determined by the Moon’s cycles each and every year. Italy’s Ravenna Cathedral contains a Roman calendar which tracks the Easter date in 19-year cycles from 532 to 626 A.D. Easter and Passover are often close to each other, but not always. Passover’s date is equally complex, and using the Hebrew calendar, is based on lunar months, which akways start with a New Moon. Passover is celebrated beginning on the 14th day or full moon of the month of Nisan, the first spring-time month.)
For those of you who have not yet settled into soothing your brain with a chocolate egg after reading this, be prepared: Since Easter happens on the Sunday following the above-described “Paschal” Full Moon, it can fall on any date between March 22 and April 25. TIME geeks (like me) are invited to meditate on the following Alice in Wonderland-style factoid… Guess what? “March 24 is the most unusual Gregorian Easter date, and the interval of 467 years between March 22, 1818, and March 22, 2285 holds the record for “absenteeism.” meaning you’d have to be TIME itself to stick around for the next instance of Easter falling on March 24.
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5. Didn't you promise us Easter Eggs, Diane? We’re getting hungry!
Since Easter is one of what I call the “Candy Holidays” I suspect you’ve got your own supply well in hand. So to avoid a sugar roller coaster, I have two other kinds of Easter Eggs for you. Courtesy of Apple, that geeky little digital fruit company in Silicon Valley, Easter Eggs have been a tradition deep inside their software for decades. In this context, “An Easter egg is a feature hidden within a program, usually intended to be found for humorous purposes by persons using it.”
The fun is that they are intentionally hidden, never promoted, and they can even hide in plain sight. I don’t want to spoil the fun of discovery, but I will point you toward two of them without telling you their details. Just take a closer look at your Apple icons for the clock and the calendar on your iPhone (or iPad or Desktop) and see what you notice. Other tech companies have them, too, to varying degrees. And Taylor Swift plays the Easter Egg game herself! But she spices thing up for her fans with Scavenger Hunts, Red Herrings, and other goodies —after all, she’s been on the public stage for 23 years and counting, so she’s got plenty of Easter Egg options to sweeten the game! Enjoy the hunt.
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6. Let’s play a game with TIME! We’ll call it Hide & Discover.
All this talk of hidden Easter Eggs, forgotten history, the elusive Easter Bunny, and other rabbits with their personal magic, has me thinking it’s time for a game. Let’ make it easy, fun, and fast. We’ve probably all come across a class or course that suggested we write a letter to ourselves in the future. People also love making “time capsules” and burying artifacts, or shooting them into space (NASA’s done this more than once) in the hope someone a hundred or more years from now will open it up and be amazed at what you sent them.
I suggest you send a few Easter Eggs to yourself. Instead of Hide & Seek, let’s play Hide & Discover, in the next 24–48 hours. Keep it simple. You’ll post 1, 2, or 3 “appointments” in your computer or smartphone’s digital calendar, each one as an entry for a certain date. Here’s what to do. 1. Keep it short. 2. Keep it fun. 3. Keep it open-ended. You could : (a.) Ask yourself a question you can’t answer now but would like to know. (b.) Invite yourself to do something outside your routine that you’d like to do. (c.) Tell yourself about a quality you have that you really like. Done!
Now, post these messages as appointments, each to a different date anywhere from 9 months to 18 months from now. Then forget about them. When these dates show up, play along and see what you’ll discover then, that’s currently hidden from your view right now. It’s Easter Egg Time! You don’t need to tell a soul you’re doing this. It’s just a little gift between you and you.
Enjoy Easter Egg Time!
❤ Diane
