Forums » The Lounge » Read Thread

Hey guys. As you may know, it's almost time for Easter this year. I was reading this NG article about Easter traditions, and was wondering how/if you celebrate Easter.

As for me, though I'm out of the country at the moment, I usually celebrate Easter American (?) style at my parent's place, where a possibly non-existant anthropomorphic bunny hides decorated chicken periods around the house. And a dinner afterwards where quite possibly bunnies and chickens are consumed.

Awkwardly try not to discuss religion.

*shrug* Depends on who's around. Church, family dinners, my grandparents on my stepdad's side hiding those lottery scratch off tickets in Easter eggs for us to find, y'know, normal stuff.

I eat a giant chocolate egg filled with candy.

My mom is Orthodox Christian, so it's not until May 1st. I think I might go this year, again, after... fifteen years? Wow.

It's a midnight service, with a procession of candles lit from a renewed central flame, with beautiful hymns. And the afterwards a feast of all the foods we fasted from, lots of pork and savory treats, and the traditionally-dyed red eggs, cracked against your neighbor's.

Toooootally pagan-appropriated traditions... which as a sometime-neopagan, I now feel justified in participating in. I didn't go for all those years because I was an atheist, and it felt like it would be an intrusion. Also, the ritual cannibalism as the core sacred rite IS kind of weird. I'll probably skip that, but I'm sure I won't be the only one.

I'm not really familiar with Orthodox Christianity, but please tell me that that last part refers to the host, or something like that. And not, you know, actual cannibalism...

:P Christianity has nothing to do with actual cannibalism. I'm assuming either she's kidding or referring to the communion, which involves eating bread and drinking wine (or crackers and grape juice these days) in memory of the crucifixion. Jesus referred to it as his blood and body because he was comparing himself to the (animal) sacrifices made prior to his death. 

The tone was intended as tongue-in-cheek, but a little bit "ha ha, only serious." I do not believe that Jesus was non-human.

Orthodox Christianity is sibling to Catholicism, though also divided by region of origin, in the U.S.

... Christian doctrine would agree with you that he was, indeed, human. (It would also add that he was still God's son.)

Mm... I tend to think of Catholicism as Christianity's kid, not its sibling. Catholics are considered a subset of Christians. (And Judaism is more or less the old, crabby grandpa, and Islam is that distant cousin nobody wants to talk about.)

...and Islam the bastard child that has all the papers but nobody wants to admit is part of the family?

Edit: Damn you, Kiel, beating me at my own game.

Or that. That works, too, lol.

Where do the Jehovah Witnesses and Mormons fit in?

I think they go right beside the trick or treaters.

Like I would dignify that state by acknowledging its existence.

A smaller branch from where Jesus would be, I think for Mormons.

But, that would imply that they came into existence before even the Catholic church. I don't know about JWs, but Mormons have only been around since the 19th century.

If we're strictly speaking about chronology.  The tree in this pict seems to be more about whenever a difference in source interpretation happened, so I'm not too sure if time really plays a key factor in this.

Maybe nuts that fell off the tree and grew into other smaller trees.

More for Jehovah's, seeing how there isn't a Trinity established.

Gonna be honest here. I was worried of what that link would lead me to.

Incidentally, Morgan, the Easter services you've gone to sound almost nothing like the ones I've attended.

Oh? Would you mind sharing your experience? I know very little about Catholicism, although I do have my token Catholic friend. But I'd be very curious to know what Catholic Easter is like.

The procession winds around the whole church, by the way. Candles in the midnight darkness. And then the priest knocks on the doors, and invokes Christ, and then the doors open from within. A helper, I believe, though not one of the altar boys.

Oh, and the priests are married OR celibate, but the ones I've known were married. Which tends to prevent certain unfortunate cases of systemic abuse, I think.

Huh? Maybe I'm just exhausted and misinterpreting, but you ... want me to tell you what a Catholic Easter service is like?

Um. I mean, I could try.

But ... I'm not Catholic. xD (Incidentally, celibacy and staying single is discouraged in the Bible, it explicitly tells people to get married and go at it if they have "urges"--but I could go on for hours about what practices certain subsets got wrong.)

Those Catholics sure know how to have a good time. totally not suggestive.

Uh.....I'm a Catholic. But I'm not really......uh, open about it.

That's good. Never do it in public... just don't.

I am offended and reasoned by your words.

Oops. Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you. Just trying to be humorous. Perhaps religious topics aren't the place to be like that. My bad.

EDIT: Now I think you may have been joking but I can't tell.

To be honest I don't know either. XD

The kid's 13; sarcasm doesn't really shine on him unless it's blatantly obvious XD

Well I'm 14, and I'm a fairly sarcastic person. Is 14 the threshold of when you can finally understand sarcasm?

Nope! 'cause I'm 14 and I only get sarcasm about half the time.

What!? I thought you were like 17 or something! Goddamnit, can we all just agree to not say our ages from now on. Ruins my imagination. Ever since I learned that Bradin wasn't a fourty year old low-life who never leaves his basement, I've been a total wreck. Guess I'll have to restart the fan fiction.

*Raises hand* I'm 14.

I'm with you there on te age of Taco. But I never thought Keil would be THAT old.

You mean Easter Vigil, or Easter Mass?

Hold on, I thought I would be the only Orthodox Christian on this site celebrating Easter on the 1st of May. I have a question(that you are not forced to answer if you don't want to), from what country do you(or your family) come from, because beside Russia and my own country, I don't know a lot of Orthodox Christian countries.?

?

Bruh. You know I'm Orthdox, too.

?Do wolves even celebrate Easter?

?... right, it seems my brain conveniently forgot about you when I made that post, I'm truly sorry.

Not wolves, dear. Wolf-humans.

Lol fam it's fine

About about the closest I ever got to "celebrating" it is having the Ten Commandments on in the background. Maybe I'll switch it up this year and finally get around to watching the Batman version.

I celebrated Ostara with some pagan friends last Sunday. I don't know what I'm going to do for Easter, though.

Usually I get dragged to church, but this year Mother isn't going to bother because a) she's mad at the Catholic church for the whole systematic abuse thing they have going on and a big part of it was just uncovered in our area and b) my brother and I are off to see relatives on my dad's side of the family which is a very stressful endeavor for many reasons, chief among them being the fact that I haven't seen that side of the family for about a year. So tomorrow we're just going to eat chocolate and chill out and probably say ten Hail Mary's and five Our Father's as penance for skipping service and then feel a bit guilty because we won't feel as bad about skipping as we probably should.

Update: I might be going to church tomorrow because Mother isn't as upset about the whole "Catholic priests abuse children" thing as originally thought and she's convinced that because my brother is a good Catholic that he'll want to go tomorrow. And if he's going, Mom will be driving him and thus since both of them will be going, I too will have to go to church. Hopefully my brother is less devout than originally thought and then Mother won't be guilted into taking us. 

Well, I'm sorry to hear that.

It's chill. The thing with the relatives went better than expected, mostly because my one cousin announced her pregnancy (which would be good if she wasn't an unmarried dirt-poor 21 year old living with her mother who can't drive. Personally I don't care, but my family does), so that took the pressure off of me a bit. 

I usually am "dragged" into family stuff.

I egg the Catholic Church. 

That goes very well with what I practice lol.

I practice Caltholism.

So...?

Easter hunts or not?

Did you go to the completely optional Easter Vigil Mass prior?

Did you go to the Easter Mass?

Are you still committed to improving yourself as you did in Lent?

Was the father's homily good this time?

Did your parish really wash feet?

Are you wearing bright colors to the Mass?

Will you have some sort of get-together with family. friends, or the church community?

If so, will it be a pot-luck?

If not, will you find other way to celebrate?

Do you plan on Confirmation any time soon?

Do you plan on Marian Consecration any time soon?

Do you plan on doing any community service anytime soon?

Did you know Catholic private schools are sometimes better at bringing out the worst in people than public schools?

Did you know that public schools are sometimes better at bringing out the worst in people than Catholic private schools?

Did you know that there's an organization in the Roman Catholic Church that does the whole door-to-door evangelical preachy thing?  Me neither.

Did you know that 0 / everyone who was ever invited to Catholicism liked that "repent to our Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved but I don't know the specifics as to why or how" thing?  

Whoever invented that method should feel bad; it's the best way to get rejected if you can't explain, let alone set an example in your own life.

You are a logical man.

I was thinking of inviting the children in my classes to re-enact the Ressurection. That means we'll nail one of them to a large cross, hang them up for a few days while the other students spit at them and beat them with thorns. We then bury that student in a small hill and wait for him to return to life as our ever-loving God is famous for never allowing his servants and followers to suffer unnecessarily and will surely return my fallen student as good as new and mould free.

Alternatively I might dress up as a large rabbit, hide eggs made of chocolate around the school, assure my students I have not gone mad and this really is a Western tradition and then tell them they need to find my eggs. For some reason the second option seems to make about as much sense as the first but it does seem a bit nicer.

Option 3 is to celebrate by going out eating and drinking with my friends in the evening. I might do that...

I like option 1.

You're forgetting option 4, which is to fabricate a really cool Easter tradition, convince all of your students it's real, and then reveal to them that it's not, crushing their hopes and dreams.

Step 1: Perfrom option 2

Step 2: Perform option 1 now that they trust you

Step 3: Perform option 3 except you're eating the child and drinking his/her blood

Step 4: Profit! $$$

What!?

If you happened to be teaching in certain parts of The Phillipines, option 1 might've actually been a valid part of the curriculum. 

My cousin convinced his brother-in-law mike to dress up as the Easter bunny & surprise his two little kids while they were doing the egg hunt in their backyard.

Prolly should've made sure their German shepherd was inside the house. 

Hahaha

so the kids are screaming "Sasha's killing the Easter bunny!!" 

Mike starts trying to take off the costume & cousin & his wife stop trying to get the dog off him & start trying to prevent him removing the costume (cause that would ruin Easter right? XD )

Finally cousins holding the dog & his wife is screaming "run, mike, run!"

So Mike is running across their very large backyard towards the woods, but the head of the bunny is twisted around so he can't see & he's staggering across the lawn until finally he fell over a bush. 

That's sad and funny.

Oh, God, I hope they don't kill the dog.

Why would they do that?

*grins*

I don't think they should either, but people tend to react crazily to dog bites. In North Carolina, there was a guy who stabbed his dog to death with a samurai sword for biting his roommate.

Here.

Amazing xD

Normally I try to attend an outside sunrise service which usually involves a reading of the resurrection passage, a very short sermon about it then lots of really beautiful old hymns (my current church usually mixes in a few more modern worship songs) Then we all just chat and hang out until breakfast time.

Sometimes go to a later service too which is a more 'full' service with a longer sermon.

Once we have put our beliefs first, then we have the big family Lunch/Dinner with extended family and the Easter egg hunts etc. for the kids, splurge on chocolate etc.

Ooh cool, sunrise services are the best ha ha. 

Haha, I just realized how different celebrating Passion Week in an academic Christian fellowship is, compared to how it is at home in a proper church. The latter half of this week has been an emotional rollercoaster, and I mean that in the best of ways. I've been offline mostly since this was the first year I volunteered as staff for the open house fellowship meetings leading up to Easter, and wow, it's been a completely different experience from the mentor side of things. I think I've had more honest conversations with people in this week than I usually have in an entire year, and I'm really glad some of them opened up about things I had no idea they were even struggling with.

So I'm really looking forward to Easter Service tomorrow, even if I'll mostly be helping set up all the games and barbeque and prayer walks instead of participating in them.

Though, it'll be nice to have free time again once Monday rolls around.

Did you know you are the Quiller?

Er, yes? Last time I checked, I was, indeed, myself. XD

Yay!

Psst, think he's drunk or something?

I went to Church earlier tonight for an Easter Service, which was basically like any other sunday service but a little longer and a different theme.

Tomorrow, I'll be hiding 47 dyed eggs around my grandparents yard for 3 little ones. And I have to remember where all of them are, in case some don't get found. Which is probably going to be really bad, since my memory isn't all that great right now, and every year there's always one or two that aren't found. >_>' I hope that the smell of rotten eggs isn't as bad as people make it out to be for their sake (I can't smell, so I wouldn't notice at all.)

And this is one of the reasons why the plastic ones are better.

Do you know what it's called? I mean, there's a word for a lack of sight, hearing, and the ability to talk. So what about the inability to smell? What's that called?

Anosmia! Thanks, Vsauce!

I stay home on my laptop all day.

For me, all it is is eating more than usual at three o'clock.

Usually I'd like to go to Church. My family and I would wake up early and make some food, bring it to the church and then help set up until the lunchtime service. Then we'd go home and eat a big dinner with family friends or other relatives who might not be Christian but would still like to have a good time. Lately my family and I have been busy so we just do our own little prayer in our spare time. If anyone was wondering, I'm Presbyterian :)

UPDATE: Praise the lord for the first who ever said 'It was just a prank bro'. God bless for our first ever memer.

Wait, they killed Jesus!?

FUCKING GODDAMMIT! I DIDN'T READ THAT FAR YET! WHY DON'T THEY HAVE SPOILER WARNINGS AT THE SINGING BIBLE FAN CLUB!?

Good one, Sent.

Well, I am a Non-Denominational Christian, who lives in the United States. Easter usually involves waking up early to go to church (Like any other Sunday). My brothers and I come downstairs to discover Easter baskets full of treats for each of us. We then get ready and head out to church. Church goes on as usual, with the exception of a number of visitors and the sermon is usually about something pertaining to Easter (The Resurrection, Jesus, ect.). After church, my family often heads to my aunt's home to spend time with our extended family and Easter lunch/dinner.

So yeah, that's me.

I celebrated this Easter by... Going to work and taking inbound calls about broken appliances.

Normally, I like to celebrate things the Protestant Christian way, so maybe next year.