GUYANESE people, in ordinary parlance, speak of “Easter” either as Easter Monday or even as the period from Good Friday to Monday, since three of the four days are public holidays.  It is mostly only religious people who tend to correctly term Sunday as ‘Easter.’  It should be remembered that Easter never falls on the same date and month each year as Christmas does, because Easter uses the Lunar Calendar.  Easter, however it is regarded, marks the culmination of the life and teachings of Lord Jesus and the establishment of the Christian religion.

The  Lord Jesus was born in Bethlehem, a town in Palestine, to a working-class family, his father being a carpenter. There were many miraculous occurrences at his birth: His mother was a virgin, and a heavenly angel had visited at the time he was born, lighting up the vicinity with the bright light of the Shekinah.   Most remarkably, astrologers and other intellectuals in distant countries who were engaged in occult sciences, knew many months before that an incarnation of God would be born in Palestine and three of the most prominent of these Magi set out for Palestine. They were guided by the Star of Bethlehem, arrived on the evening of his birth, brought him symbolic gifts of frankincense, gold and murr, and then paid worship.

Modern Western Man is always sceptical about the “miraculous,” but he will be less so when he realises that all the major religious traditions record similar miraculous happenings at the birth of their prominent teachers.  For example, the birth of Lord Krishna is enshrouded with a number of similar miraculous events, but unlike Lord Jesus who taught in person, he revealed the Bhagwat Gita on the battlefield and it was then disseminated by others.

Lord Jesus began his ministry at 12, when he was recorded as expelling the money changers and other business folk desecrating the synagogue with their activities.  In his adult life, he wandered over  Palestine teaching and in so doing, performed many miraculous actions, including the raising of the dead, stilling a storm at sea, walking on water, curing ailments such a blindness, exorcising evil spirits and saving the hosts of a wedding party who had run out of wine from deep embarrassment by transforming water into wine of the highest excellence.

Lord Jesus taught an ethic different from that which prevailed in the Middle East and is often characterised by the phrase ” turning the other cheek instead of exacting an eye for an eye.”  This ethic is the same as the Buddhist, which has led  a body of opinion to speculate that he spent those years of his life unaccounted for in the Bible, in Buddhist lands.

Lord Jesus’ ministry was beginning to have an impact on the ordinary Jewish folk and this alarmed the powerful Jewish establishment who felt that Lord Jesus’ teachings were subversive to the Jewish faith as they knew it and he, therefore, had to be silenced. A charge of treason was concocted that Jesus was claiming he was King of the Jews in opposition to the authority of the Emperor Augustus and the Roman colonial government accordingly sent soldiers to arrest him.  They could not locate him until his beloved disciple, Judas Iscariot, betrayed him.  He was then arrested and taken to Jerusalem for trial before the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate.

Pilate could find no fault with Jesus and was willing to free him, but the Jewish establishment, the Sanhedrin and the incensed mob called for Jesus to be sentenced to death and in the interest of public order, Pilate was forced to bend to their pressure and condemn Jesus to death by crucifixion.

Jesus had to carry his heavy cross to the execution grounds and kept falling and was repeatedly beaten until he got up.  At the execution grounds, he was nailed to the cross and while suspended there, a soldier punctured his torso with his spear leaving him to die a slow and painful death.

Christian believers had faith in the belief  that Jesus, by his death, had taken the burden of  the sins of humanity on himself and made it easier for all to receive Salvation and that, by his death, his teachings would be established forever but that these events would only come to pass when he was resurrected on the third day after execution.

On Friday evening, his body was removed from the cross by his family, taken to the family vault, given a religious burial, and a very heavy stone closed off the entrance.  Saturday was a time of agonising wait and on Sunday morning, when the family and Christian believers went to the vault, they found the stone closing off the entrance had been removed and that Jesus’ body had disappeared.  Later, they saw Jesus walking about, but a few persons still did not believe he was resurrected, including the disciple Thomas whom Jesus had to convince by inviting him to place his finger in his fresh wounds.  Later in the day, the Ascension took place.

Sunday, now known as Easter, was a time suffused with deep joy and happiness and explosive victory, for it vindicated that Jesus was the Son of God, an incarnation of God,  as well as the validity of his teachings which were recognised as truly divine.  It meant that Christianity had been established forever.

The Christian Churches commemorate and dramatically re-enact the death of Jesus on Good Friday, the Saturday of waiting and the burst of joy of the  Resurrection and conquest of death by Lord Jesus on Easter Sunday.

In Guyana, Hindus and Muslims respect and empathise with their Christian brethren on the sadness of Good Friday,  the anxious wait of Easter Saturday and the joy of Easter Sunday itself.  Easter Monday is a secular holiday celebrated with quiet gusto by all with picnics. The ubiquitous kite-flying is the only custom of that day that has a religious significance, since it reminds of the Ascension.