Although Easter is a specific part of the Christian calendar, it is also a moveable commercial feast of chocolate eggs and hares.
The word Easter probably derives from the name of the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre who is associated with the arrival of spring, while in the German folklore of ‘Oschter Haws’, Easter hares would lay nests of coloured eggs.
Although the blending of Christian and pagan ritual is not unusual, Easter is a major Christian festival and feast celebrating the resurrection of Christ and is an antecedent to the season of Lent. This has links to the Jewish feast of Passover, which celebrates the Exodus of the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt. The apostle Paul, writing from Ephesus, exclaims, “Christ our Pascha (Passover) has been sacrificed for us.”
Sacrifice
The notion of resurrection and sacrifice is woven into the very fabric of Christianity. It is this theme of sacrifice which various writers have explored in trying to come to terms with the world around them.
Wilfred Owen is one such writer. Owen explored the story of the biblical patriarch Abraham (Abram in the poem), who takes his only son, Isaac, with him to make a sacrificial offering to God.
In the bible, Abraham’s faith is tested, and Isaac is spared from being the subject of the sacrifice at the last minute in exchange for a ram. Maybe this release from sacrifice is comparable to the resurrection of Jesus and his sacrifice on the cross?
In Owen’s poem, The Parable of the Old Man and the Young the poet creates an extended metaphor that uses the biblical story to reference his own experiences of the reality and brutality of war and to expose those who would sacrifice so many for their own ends.
It is generally accepted that the old man in the poem represents those European nations who took their countries to war. The rulers believed that sacrificing their nations’ pride – the “Ram of Pride” in the poem – was too high a price. The tragic irony is that the real cost was millions of dead – the “seed of Europe”.
The poem, typical of Owen, is written loosely in iambic pentameter. It does not use traditional rhyme; instead, the lines are bound together by assonance, and alliteration. Only the last two lines rhyme and they make for a chilling, haunting conclusion.
The Parable of the Old Man and the Young
Wilfred Owen 1893 –1918
So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
and builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
(This poem is among those set in the War Requiem of Benjamin Britten.)
The willingness to sacrifice one generation for the causes of another is explored by many writers and the poet/singer/song writer Leonard Cohen also used it in this 1968 song, The Story of Isaac. Today, as in the past, The Story of Isaac acts as a warning against the folly of faith and devotion, and against the despotism and the intergenerational, sacrificial violence it gives birth to.
Or, maybe Edward Thomas expresses the waste most poignantly?
In Memoriam (Easter, 1915)
Edward Thomas
The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood
This Eastertide call into mind the men
Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts should
Have gathered them and will do never again.
A further note on Easter Flowers: It’s thought that Easter lilies came to symbolize Christ not only because they embody purity. The trumpet-shaped blooms recall the horns that heralded the resurrection of Christ. And the life cycle of Easter lilies, which grow from a bulb for several years beneath the earth before blossoming into magnificent flowers, recalls Jesus’ death and resurrection.
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