Monthly Archives: April 2014

Apr 14 2014
1 Comment
Passover

Pesach

Pesach

We enter Holy Week now and always hand in hand with Easter is the Jewish celebration of Passover. This year, Passover, or in Hebrew Pesach, with the setting sun tonight, April 14. The holiday commemorates the freeing of the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt, and is celebrated with a meal, the seder. A friend explains it thusly: “We are traveling through the desert with our ancestors via a table filled with metaphor and symbolism.” Unleavened bread is a central part of the celebration, for the Israelites had to leave Egypt so quickly there was no time to let the bread rise. Instead, it had to be baked immediately.

The Italians call Passover Pasqua Ebraica, which you might translate as “Jewish Easter,” but in fact in many languages the names of both Easter and Passover are the same. Pesach informs the name given to Easter in Italian: Pasqua. The English word “Easter” does not share this etymological relation to Pesach. It is related more to the the Old English “Eostre,” which is the name of an Anglo-Saxon goddess whose feast day was celebrated around the Spring Equinox.

Among the questions asked at the seder table is this one: Why is this night different from all other nights? And I actually cannot tell you. I’ve never attended a seder. But I will join all who are in spirit tonight and wish you abundant blessings.

 

The image above is taken from a 19th century Haggadah by an anonymous Russian folk artist [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Apr 11 2014
1 Comment
Holy Week, Lent, Palm Sunday

Holy Week

the-entry-into-jerusalem

Lent is nearly over. Sunday is Palm Sunday, or Passion Sunday, marking the day of Jesus’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem, setting the events of Holy Week in motion. The Passion of Christ is read in churches on Palm Sunday, and this, together with the blessing of palms, makes for one very long service, so be prepared!

But you do leave with gifts: blessed palms. One of the most common traditions associated with Palm Sunday is the fashioning of these palms into crosses and other figures. Some folks pin a piece of palm to their lapel or their hat. A lesser known custom for Palm Sunday is the eating of figs. This comes from Christ’s cursing of the fig tree, which occurred soon after he came to Jerusalem:

In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once. (Matthew 21: 18-19)

This passage always struck me as so bizarre. It seems like such a mean thing to do to this fig tree. Be that as it may, some people make sure to eat figs on Palm Sunday just because of this verse and a similar one in Mark. They’ll be eating dried figs, for sure, because it’s not fig season. You’d think Jesus would have known that, too.

And with Palm Sunday’s close, we begin to clean. Just as we “made our house fair as we are able” during Advent, these next few days are days of making our house fair as we are able for the coming feast of Easter. By Wednesday night, all should be done, and all distractions set aside, for the mysteries of Easter begin with Holy Thursday: one of the most special nights of the year, a night rich with ceremony and ending in pilgrimage and peaceful contemplation. It is the first part of the Triduum of Holy Thursday (or Maundy Thursday), Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. And that Triduum we’ll discuss later in the week.

 

Image: L’entrata in Gerusalemme (The Entry into Jerusalem) by Giotto, fresco, c.1305, [Public domain], via WikiPaintings.

 

Apr 01 2014
2 Comments
All Fools' Day

Hunt the Gowk & Play the Fool

Spaghetti

Tricks and practical jokes are to be expected today, for it is All Fools’ Day, or April Fools. If you are to follow the tradition, you’ve got to complete your trick by noon… though it’s probably wise to be wary all day long. For gullible people like me, it can be a very long day indeed.

The origins of this one are tough to pin down. There is a Norse god named Loki whose feast day is today, and Loki happens to be a trickster god. So that could be it. But there also is the fact that March 25 was once New Year’s Day, making the First of April the Octave of New Year and the end of the new year revels, and it is thought that perhaps the foolishness of the date goes back to very old new year customs.

Whatever the origin, the practice of April Fools goes back many centuries throughout Europe. In Scotland, it’s known as hunting the gowk, the gowk being a cuckoo and in this case the fool. In France, it’s un poisson d’Avril, an April fish, who describes the fool, and there the tradition is more about sticking a piece of paper (often a drawing or a paper cutout of a fish or the word poisson) to the pack of the unsuspecting fool. And in Italy, the day features the same sort of fishy business, with the fool being a pesce d’Aprile. Italian government ministries have also gotten into the April Fools’ business at times, releasing improbable news stories that only the most gullible will fall for. National Public Radio and the BBC have both been known to insert a fictional news story into their April 1st broadcasts, as well, and even we had a little April Fools fun one year with our Book of Days calendar page for April, which featured Easter Eggplant as it is grown here in Lake Worth, along with a calendar featuring some lesser-known April holidays like St. Biscotti’s Day, honoring the man who brought hard biscuits to the Holy Family at the Nativity, Turnip Tuesday, and Dalmatia, an ancient Roman festival for which it is customary to howl at the moon while dressed in black-spotted white garments. That was the Convivio Book of Days calendar page for April 2005, but I’ve since been very well behaved on All Fools’ Day, preferring to keep the mischief more local (like glueing the toothpaste cap to the tube, or glueing the toilet paper so it can’t be unrolled, or placing a tiny scrap of Post-It note to the bottom of an unsuspecting person’s optical mouse).

This year, I am opting to lay off the tricks, but that doesn’t mean everyone else will. So be careful out there. Have fun. And be nice to people like me. Some of us have kind and gentle hearts and we are likely to believe anything.

 

Image: A still from the famous BBC Spaghetti Harvest news segment of April 1, 1957, detailing the amazing bumper crop that year of spaghetti grown and harvested in southern Switzerland… all due to mild winter conditions and the virtual disappearance of the destructive spaghetti weevil.

 

 

Tagged
Newer posts →