Religious Pretext for Vain Show
PERHAPS no religious service is attended by more professed Christians than that held on Easter Sunday. Regarding the 1953 Easter the New York Times, April 6, reported: “Easter Services Jammed. Record Throngs in City Pay Glad Tribute to the Resurrection.” It also told of mammoth crowds attending Easter sunrise services in various parts of the United States and that one of the largest crowds ever assembled in St. Peter’s Square gathered there to hear an address by the pope.
Among the details given in the Times report were the following: At St. Patrick’s cathedral the bright finery of 5,000 worshipers combined with the white and gold vestments of the priests and the choral alleluias to reflect the joy of the Easter celebration of the solemn pontifical mass. At the cathedral of St. John the Divine another 5,000 thronged the service at which five church banners and 62 organ trumpets were blessed, followed by a solemn liturgical procession of clergy and choir robed in white.
At St. Martin’s Episcopal church a garden was set up in the chapel of the church. “It contained a representation of the Hill of Calvary with three crosses and the Holy Sepulchre. An azalea bush was planted beside the tomb and daffodils, tulips, narcissuses, blue daisies, lilies and snapdragons were included in the arrangement. The tomb was constructed from rocks from many countries.” Some 6,000 persons viewed this display in the five Easter services held in the church.
At Radio City an audience of some 6,500 witnessed a “dramatic enactment of the rising of the Easter sun”, the stage simulating the interior of a Gothic cathedral with red and blue stained-glass windows, the altar being flanked by Easter lilies and guarded by figures of angels. Similar sunrise services were held in other theaters throughout the city, and at Paramus, New Jersey, nearly 9,000 attended the Easter sunrise service.
Nor were the spectacles limited to places of worship. Police estimated that 1,250,000 witnessed the Easter parade on Fifth Avenue, where not only the notable figures of society paraded in their finest and most correct, but where notoriety seekers held forth and publicity agents of milliners and clothing stores advertised their wares by means of models who posed as Easter worshipers. One white-haired old gentleman, attired like Benjamin Franklin in eighteenth-century knee breeches and buckled pumps, presented himself at one church after another.
One “woman wore a large round wide-brimmed hat on which was mounted a cross, table and chairs for the Last Supper, chickens, a live bird in a cage and other bric-a-brac”; who, however, was admonished to keep on walking until she got outside of the Easter parade area. Another wore a large hat containing rows upon rows of pink roses, topped with a skirted rabbit, chickens and an American flag. A number of other such millinery creations were also seen, calling to mind the fantastic headgear of the South African ricksha boys. In spite of all this we are solemnly assured that this was the most dignified Easter held in recent years!
Ostensibly one engages in a form of worship for the purpose of pleasing or appeasing a deity. Those professing to be Christians by the same token engage in their religious services for the purpose of gaining the favor of the God of the Bible. To gain his favor he tells us that our worship must be based on truth, must be sincere and uncontaminated by the world.—John 4:24; Heb. 4:13; Jas. 1:27, NW.
But are the spectacles enacted in the churches and the finery displayed on Fifth Avenue for the purpose of winning Jehovah God’s approval? Or is its purpose to attract the idly curious, win the approval of men and reap a large harvest of shekels for the coffers of the church? And what about the sincerity of such church attenders who limit church-going to once or twice a year, when a spectacle is being presented? Are not such drawing near to God with their lips while their hearts are far removed from him? Are they not displaying a form of godly devotion but proving false to its power?—Matt. 15:8; 2 Tim. 3:5, NW.
All such, however, is not surprising in view of the fact that “there is no indication of the observance of the Easter festival in the New Testament or in the writings of the apostolic Fathers”. (Encyclopædia Britannica) It was first at the Council of Nice, A.D. 325, that Easter was established as a festival, to fall on the first Sunday after the full moon on or following March 21.
Easter and everything associated with it is of pagan origin, not Christian. The very term “Easter” is taken from the goddess of spring, Ostara, a variation of Ishtar or Astarte. Both eggs and rabbits are pagan symbols of fertility, while the wearing of new Easter hats was done by pagans to assure luck in love.
Even the thousands of Easter sermons are filled with paganism. The theme of immortality is stressed and much is made of the return of life in the spring as emblematic of human immortality. Thus clergymen confuse the Scriptural teaching of the resurrection from the dead with the Pythagorean and Platonic teaching of the immortality of the human soul, as if they were one and the same thing. Far from being the same they are not even compatible, for there could be no resurrection unless there was a death, a cessation of life; and if the immortality teaching is true then there is no such thing as death.
How could Christ Jesus have been immortal when he plainly told John that he was the Living One who had become dead but now was living forever and ever? (Rev. 1:5, 18; 2:8, NW) And note also Paul’s argument on the resurrection at 1 Corinthians, chapter 15. If there is no resurrection then Christ is not risen but is still dead, and Christians are without hope. The resurrection hope and the immortality dogma cannot be reconciled.
Easter has no place in the true worship of Jehovah God. It is based on false teaching and serves as a religious pretext for vain show. And judging by the crowds his professed “people love to have it so”.—Jer. 5:31.