easter and pesach

A friend of mine and I today were talking about his visit home for Passover yesterday, and it hit me what a good thing the Jews have set up in the way they celebrate the seder.

The seder, as probably everyone knows, is a meal that is filled with structure, layered with meaning, and replete with teaching. The elements of seder, laid out in the book of Exodus and developed further in the Talmud and Midrash, remind children and adults every year about their Jewish heritage. Through the ritual, they remember the suffering of their ancestors in Egypt and the deliverance God brought them through Moses in exquisite detail. Each element of the meal from the horseradish down to the matzoh refers back to some element of the Exodus story. It's a fantastic way not only to educate children about the religion, but to keep the Jewish identity intact despite all the pressures to conform to a non-Jewish society.

By contrast, when we celebrate Easter this year, most of us are going to go to church like we do every other Sunday, although some of us might dress up a little more, and then we'll go home and eat an Easter ham with spend time with family.

That's nice, but I can't help but think what we're missing out on. When Jesus ate that final seder with his disciples on Maundy Thursday,1 he added new layers of meaning as reinterpreted each element of the meal to refer to himself, from the lamb to the glass of wine to the matzoh. I doubt the average Christian household would even know where to begin that process with our own Easter meals. Passover can tell the story of the Exodus and the Passion; my Easter dinner is mostly just a nice family time.

It doesn't have to be that way, though. When missionaries brought the gospel to our pagan ancestors, they used elements of the pagans' belief systems to explain the gospel. The renewal and new beginnings that the Anglo-Saxons looked forward to with the arrival of Easter met its fulfillment in Christ, and so the trappings of Easter celebration -- like eggs and rabbits, symbols of beginning and fertility -- were reinterpreted along those lines.

Last year, I turned the question of Easter eggs over and over in my mind and sought a way to use them to teach my children. I finally hit upon the egg as a type -- when we boil the egg, it changes from being runny to being hard. In the same way, Christ uses the trials of this life to change our inner being. And, just as dipping the egg into the dye changes its color, so we can be changed to look like Christ when we immerse ourselves in him.

The Easter basket I turned into a living parable. We search for Truth and when we find it we're glad and we treasure it, just as we search for the basket and are happy for what it gives us.

I'd like to do more with the Easter dinner, though. Some of the family traditions we have are nice. Eowyn likes to eat holiday meals by candlelight, just like I do; and there's the foods we "must" have or it's not Easter, like the ham and the mashed potatoes and what have you.

But I really want to see if we can do what the Jews do with Passover, and turn the day into more than just a family get-together and meal to feel good over. Easter is a different day for us too. It marks the day we were set free from slavery to sin and really experienced the joys of God's love and forgiveness. If Passover can be a meal to pass the faith down through the generations, so can Easter.

But I'm stuck for how to do it. Any suggestions?

1 I did point out to Josh, and he agreed, that Christians have much neater names for the individual days of Holy Week than Jews have for the days of Passover. Although we have the lame and predictable "Palm Sunday," we also have Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday and Easter Monday.

Of course, as I also mentioned, Jewish holidays have much nicer-sounding names than Christian ones. Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and Advent just can't hold a candle namewise to Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashana, Hanukkah, Sukkoth and Pesach.

Plus, if Constantine had converted to Judaism, we'd get three weeks of vacation every year, since Passover, Hanukkah and the High Holy Days each run about that long. We really shot ourselves in the foot by making sure that Easter always lands on a weekend. What management stooge thought of that?