QUAKER RANTER
A Newsletter & Blog from Martin Kelley
Ask Me Anything: Do Quakers celebrate Easter and if so, how?
A question From Jessica F about Friends and Easter.
On the face of it, this is an easy question. Early Friends were loath to recognize any liturgical practices and they were lower‑p puritanical about anything that smacked of paganism. Famously, they didn’t use the common names of the week or months because many of them referred to non-Christian deities, like Thor and Janus.
They were especially grumpy about anything that smacked of latter-day syncretism. Many of the church holidays were seen as pagan festivals with a superficial Christian overlay. I’ll be the first to admit they could get kind of obnoxious this way. Wikipedia explains some of this attitude:
Other Protestant groups took a different attitude, with most Anabaptists, Quakers, Congregationalists and Presbyterian Puritans regarding such festivals as an abomination. The Puritan rejection of Easter traditions was (and is) based partly upon their interpretation of 2 Corinthians 6:14 – 16 and partly upon a more general belief that, if a religious practice or celebration is not actually written in the Christian Bible, then that practice/celebration must be a later development and cannot be considered an authentic part of Christian practice or belief — so at best simply unnecessary, at worst actually sinful.
In Latin, Easter is called Pascha, a reference to the Jewish Passover festival. But in England, Pascha took place in the month the old English called Ēostre after a goddess whose festival was celebrated in that month. This made it doubly hard for English Protestant groups that wanted to cleanse Christianity of “popish” or “pagan” influences. So for right or wrong, they ignored it like they did the day the world calls Christmas.
Symbolically, Quakers love the idea of Easter. One of George Fox’s most key openings was that “Christ has come to teach the people himself!” The idea that Jesus rose again and is with us is pretty central to traditional Quaker beliefs.
These days Easter is largely celebrated by Friends standing up on Sunday to break the silence of worship with nostalgic stories of Easters in their pre-Quaker youth. Sometimes they’ll admit to having attended a Easter service at another church before coming to meeting that morning. If you’re really lucky, you’ll get ministry about flowers or hats.
