History of the Holidays: Easter
Read the following text and fill in the gaps with the verb that best fits each space using the correct verb form of the verbs below. There are TWO extra verbs you will not need. The activity begins with an example (0).
Verbs: regard, light, unite, spare, become, ostracise, ensure, dye, observe, exacerbate, think, appear, rise.
Easter: A Festival of Light, Language and Renewal
Easter (0) is regarded as the holiest day in the Christian calendar, its significance rooted in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Yet what may strike many as surprising is that this profoundly solemn religious festival has come to be associated with chocolate eggs, rabbits and pastel-coloured springtime decorations. Were one to accept this at face value, one might assume the two things had nothing to do with each other. In fact, the opposite is true: beneath the cheerful exterior lies a history far older, one steeped in ancient mythology, Jewish tradition, and centuries of remarkable cultural exchange.
From Passover to Easter
According to the Gospels of the New Testament, Jesus travelled to Jerusalem with his apostles to celebrate Passover — the Jewish festival commemorating the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Following the Passover meal, he was arrested, tried and crucified on what has since become known as Good Friday. Two days later, however, he is said (1) from the dead, an event that was to become the very foundation of Christian belief.
The earliest Christians — many of whom were of Jewish origin — had initially celebrated the resurrection as part of Passover itself. Indeed, the early name for Easter was Pascha, derived directly from the Hebrew Pesach, meaning Passover, a linguistic connection that survives to this day in most of the world's languages, including French (Pâques), Spanish (Pascua) and Italian (Pasqua).
The word Passover itself has its origins in one of the most dramatic narratives in the Torah, the Book of Exodus. After nine plagues had failed to persuade Pharaoh to release the Israelites from bondage, God decreed a final and devastating judgement: the death of every firstborn in Egypt. Instructed to mark their doorposts with the blood of a sacrificed lamb, the Israelites (2) when the "Destroyer" passed through Egypt that night. The biblical line encapsulating this moment reads: "When I see the blood, I will pass over you" — the very phrase from which William Tyndale coined the English word Passover in his landmark Bible translation of 1530.
Fixing the Date of Easter
In the early centuries of Christianity, Easter was celebrated on different days of the week, giving rise to considerable confusion across the growing Church. It was not until 325 AD that the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great and the Council of Nicaea resolved the matter, ruling that Easter should always be observed on a Sunday — specifically, the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox. This means Easter can fall anywhere between 22nd March and 25th April, earning it the designation of a "moveable feast," firmly anchored, even so, to the ancient lunar rhythms that had governed religious calendars long before Christianity.
It was around this time that Christians also began lighting the Paschal candle at the Easter Vigil — a large, ornate candle whose flame symbolises the light of Christ emerging from the darkness of the tomb, and which continues (3) at baptisms and funerals throughout the year.
Holy Week: The Final Days of Jesus
The week leading up to Easter is known as Holy Week, and each day carries its own theological significance. It begins with Palm Sunday, commemorating Jesus's entry into Jerusalem, where crowds are said to have spread palm branches before him. Holy Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday recall his teachings in the city — Wednesday being referred to by some traditions as Spy Wednesday, in reference to Judas Iscariot's betrayal. Maundy Thursday commemorates the Last Supper and the washing of the disciples' feet, the word Maundy deriving from the Latin mandatum, meaning "commandment." Good Friday marks the crucifixion and (4) as a day of solemn reflection and fasting, followed by Holy Saturday, a day of quiet waiting representing the time Jesus spent in the tomb.
These final three days — Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday — form the Paschal Triduum, widely regarded as a single, continuous act of worship rather than three separate occasions, and considered by many Christians to be the most sacred period in the entire liturgical year.
Pagan Traditions and the Spring Equinox
The History of the Easter Egg: From Nature to Chocolate
Long before the advent of Christianity, eggs had already been regarded as potent symbols of new life and rebirth across numerous cultures. When the new faith began to spread, these ancient associations were not discarded; rather, they were skilfully reinterpreted. The egg’s hard shell came to signify Christ’s sealed tomb, whereas the cracking of the egg was seen as emblematic of his resurrection. To this day, in many Orthodox traditions, eggs (6) a vivid red to symbolise the blood of Christ — a custom dating back to the earliest centuries of the Church.
There was, moreover, a practical reason why eggs became so firmly embedded in Easter celebrations. Throughout the forty days of Lent, the Church strictly forbade their consumption. Hens, however, continued to lay as usual, inevitably creating a surplus. In order to prevent the eggs from spoiling, families would hard-boil them; in time, eating these preserved eggs on Easter Sunday came to mark both the end of the long fast and the opening of the tomb.
The tradition was transformed in 1873, when the British company J. S. Fry & Sons produced the first hollow chocolate egg. Cadbury soon followed suit and, once a smoother variety of milk chocolate had been perfected, the chocolate Easter egg went on (7) an extraordinary commercial success. Today, what began as a simple religious emblem has evolved into one of the most popular — and commercially significant — traditions of the modern world.
The Easter Bunny and Modern Customs
The hare had long been revered as a symbol of fertility in European folklore, believed to be sacred to the goddess Eostre and admired for its extraordinary reproductive capacity. Unlike rabbits, hares possess the rare biological ability of superfetation, meaning they can conceive a second litter while still carrying the first — a seemingly magical trait that (8) wondrous to ancient observers.
From the sixteenth century onwards, German families began telling their children that a magical hare — the Oschter Haws — would deliver coloured eggs to well-behaved youngsters. Children would build nests to attract the creature, a practice that gradually evolved into the Easter egg hunt and the modern Easter basket. Had German settlers not carried this tradition to the Americas in the eighteenth century, the Easter Bunny might never have become embedded in popular culture. In 1878, President Rutherford B. Hayes opened the White House lawn to children wishing to roll their eggs, paving the way for the famous Easter Egg Roll — a tradition that has endured ever since.
A Festival for Everyone
Rarely does a single celebration manage (9) so many layers of human experience. Easter is simultaneously a Jewish story of liberation, a Christian story of resurrection and a universal story of the return of warmth and light. Whether one chooses to focus on the ancient goddess whose name gave us the word Easter, the Passover narrative at the heart of the Christian story, or simply the sight of daffodils in an English garden, the message remains the same: that life is a cycle, and that after every winter, however harsh, the light of spring will always return. It is, perhaps, this conviction above all others — ancient, universal and endlessly renewed — that (10) Easter's enduring place at the very heart of human experience.
- spare somebody/something They killed the men but spared the children.
- She begged them to spare her life.
- During the bombing only one house was spared (= was not hit by a bomb).
- The storm largely spared Houston and surrounding districts.
- spare somebody/something from something The children were spared from the virus.
- spare somebody/something sth Hong Kong was spared a direct hit, but the storm still brought heavy rains and powerful winds.
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