Hello. I'm Gill at engVid, and today we have a lesson on: Easter, and what's it all about?
So, if you're in a country where Easter is celebrated, you will already know a lot about
it, but maybe if you're not in an English-speaking country, this will be useful for you to know
the vocabulary connected with Easter in English-speaking countries. You may be in a country where Easter
isn't celebrated, so this is also designed to explain the background, some of the history
connected with Easter, and all the sort of traditions and the things that people do to
celebrate Easter. And if you're in... For example, if you're in the U.K., you will notice
that every spring around March or April there is an Easter holiday where there are two public
holidays, the schools have two weeks' holiday, so you'll be aware of this Easter holiday
period. So this is designed to explain some of the background to it. Okay.
So, it's a bit of a mixture, but going back hundreds of years before Christianity, for
example, I think people celebrated the coming of spring after the long, cold winter, so
it's a kind of spring celebration when, you know, the flowers start coming out, and blossom
on the trees, and so on. Blossom. If you have fruit trees, like an apple tree or a cherry
tree, they get flowers appearing on the tree, either white or pink, so that's blossom. And
then the flowers that grow. So... and little animals, often animals are born in the spring.
They're born all year round, of course, but in particular spring is associated with little
animals being born, like little chicks that come out of eggs; little, yellow, fluffy birds;
tiny, little chicks. They are associated with Easter, as well as flowers. Rabbits as well
are associated with Easter. And eggs, because eggs are about things being born or rebirth,
the rebirth of the... of the season, the spring coming back after the winter when nothing
seemed to grow. So, people, you know... people generally feel happier and better when spring
comes because the weather gets warmer. Of course it depends what part of the planet
you're on, because I know March and April in somewhere like Brazil, for example, it's
not... it's not your spring period, but I think people still celebrate Easter at that
time of year anyway. But in where we are in the U.K. and also North America, it is the spring.
So, it falls in March or April, and people send cards sometimes that say: "Happy Easter",
and you get pictures of flowers, and little chicks, and rabbits, and eggs. And so the
eggs, they can either be real, you know, chicken eggs, hens' eggs from birds, or they can be
chocolate eggs. So the shops... of course, shops sell eggs all the year round, real eggs;
but also chocolate eggs, a lot of them are sold just before Easter. In fact, usually
the shops, being very commercially-minded, as soon as Christmas is over and January comes,
you start to see chocolate Easter eggs in the supermarkets, which it's a bit early in
January, but that's what the shops are like. So, you get chocolate eggs, and also... In
the U.K. anyway, I'm not sure about other countries, you have a sweet... a bun with
fruit in it, which is called a hot cross bun. And it's a round... not a cake exactly. It's
more like bread, but it's quite sweet, and it has a cross on it in a lighter colour,
so it's a dark-brown or medium-brown colour when it's baked in the oven, but it has a
whiter-coloured or cream-coloured cross on it, which connects with one of the religious
associations that Easter has, which we'll come to a bit later. Okay. So, all of these
things are associated with Easter.
Also, there's a thing called an Easter bonnet, which is a hat. Usually women, they might
have a hat and they will add a lot of flowers to it, and decorate it with ribbons. They
might even put little... Not real ones, but they might put little chicks on it; little,
yellow birds on it, but not real ones, not live ones, but artificial ones. And there's
a song and a film I think connected with this, Easter bonnet. And people might have a parade
in the street, they have a competition for who's wearing the best Easter bonnet, and
somebody can win the competition. So, that can happen as well. And all the flowers, and
chicks, and everything are still associated with the Easter idea.
And another nice thing about it is that we get two days' holiday at Easter. So, they're
official public holidays in the U.K. and I think in some other countries, too. We have
a Friday, and then of course Saturday, Sunday, that's the weekend, and then we have a Monday,
so we have a four-day weekend basically. The Friday is called... In the religious terminology,
the Friday is called Good Friday and the Monday is called Easter Monday. Okay. So, Friday
there's a tradition that people eat fish on Good Friday. Some people eat fish on Fridays
generally all through the year as well, but Good Friday particularly people might decide
to eat fish rather than meat. Okay. But then Easter Monday or possibly the Sunday, Easter
Sunday, people will have a meal which is often a roast, turkey, or chicken, or some sort
of meat or lamb with vegetables. It's a bit like the Christmas meal or a Thanksgiving
meal in America, so it's a big meal with meat and vegetables because people have more time
over that long weekend. So either Easter Monday or Easter Sunday they will have that meal
there.
Okay, so nowadays Easter, it's still partly religious, it comes from some religious ideas
connected with Christianity, but also people just think of it as... If it's not religious,
the opposite of religious is secular, meaning just ordinary, everyday life; non-religious.
So: "secular" just means not religious. So... okay, no connection with religion is "secular",
just ordinary life. So, in Christianity, Jesus was executed, he was killed on the cross,
the crucifixion. Okay. So, and that happened, that is connected with this Good Friday. That's
supposed to be the date that coincides with that event, the crucifixion, the execution
on the cross. Okay. Okay. So, but then in the Bible after the crucifixion on the...
If that was a Friday, then Jesus was buried, put in a tomb, but two days later, I suppose
on the Sunday... That would be the Sunday, then, Easter Sunday that comes in between
here, he mirac-... There was a miracle. Some two women went to the tomb, but they found
that the tomb was open and there was no body inside. So, they thought: "Well, somebody's
stolen the body", but then somebody came to them and said: "He's not here. He's risen",
meaning: "He's gone up to Heaven." Okay. So, there's this idea of the resurrection, which
means to rise. So, to sort of still be alive really, but to go up to Heaven. Not dead anymore,
but alive, but gone to Heaven. So, that's called the resurrection, coming back to life
in a way, but going up to Heaven. So, that was seen to be a miracle. You know, something
that can't really happen usually in normal life. So, that's always been celebrated as
a very important event in the Christian religion, which is why we have Good Friday connected
with the crucifixion, and then Easter Monday... No, sorry. Easter Sunday in here which coincides
with the resurrection. So, Easter is a celebration of that.
But it's also connected with the Jewish religion, the Passover which was much, much earlier
with the... What's called the exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt, who they had been
taken to Egypt as slaves and made to work there as slaves, but they wanted to get back
to their own land, so this exodus meant... Meaning coming out of Egypt, leaving Egypt,
going back to their own country was another kind of miraculous event, really, how it happened.
So, that sort of happened around... It sort of connected with the same religious festival
at the same time of year, so there is that connection, too, which is much older than
the crucifixion and resurrection story. Okay, so that's the religious side. It's all a bit complex.
But apart from the religious story, which a lot of people still believe in, there is
the secular, non-religious side of Easter where, you know, a lot of working people just
think: "Oh, great, we get... We get two extra days off work", which if they're on a salary,
you know, they are paid holidays, so to have two extra days at the weekend and have a four-day
weekend, it's quite nice if you're a working person and you've been working hard; it gives
you a break from your work. And also for children at school, they get two weeks because it's
made to coincide with the terms, the three terms of the year, and where the term begins
and ends. One term ends before Easter, then there's a two-week break, and then the new...
The summer term starts after Easter. So schoolchildren, and colleges and universities as well, have
a longer Easter break, but I know sometimes they're having to study for exams and the
teachers are having to prepare their lessons for the following term, so they're still probably
doing some work during that period. So...
And then finally, just to say that there isn't a fixed date for Easter; it's not like with
Christmas in the U.K., it's always the 25th of December, but with Easter in any Christian
country, whether it's Western Europe or Eastern Europe, or North America, Australia, New Zealand,
etc., the Christian church decide when the date is going to be each year. So it could
fall in March or April. There's a sort of a whole month, a four-week period where Easter
could fall. And it's quite complicated because it's to do with the full moon and the equinox,
the spring equinox when the night is the same length as the day, so the length of time that
it's dark, the number of hours of darkness equals the number of hours of daylight, so
that's the spring equinox, and the moon. So it's different every year, and that's why
Easter falls either sometimes in March, sometimes in April. So...
So there we are, quite a complicated subject, but one that we experience every year in one
way or another. And children love the... Especially the chocolate eggs, adults as well love the
chocolate eggs, anything connected with chocolate. And people love mostly the food, having a
nice, big meal on Easter Sunday maybe or Easter Monday; meat and vegetables, and so on. And
just relaxing, and hopefully enjoying nicer weather by that time of year.
So, I hope that's been a useful background and perhaps you've learnt some new vocabulary
as well. So, please go to the website: www.engvid.com where there's a quiz to test you on the subject.
And thanks for watching, and I hope to see you again soon. Bye for now.