On Good Friday, Easter, and the Longing for Renewal

There is a moment in the liturgical year that, like no other, embodies the tension between darkness and light, between despair and hope. It is that transition from Good Friday to Easter Sunday, that silent, almost unbearable pause between death and resurrection that has captivated Christendom for two millennia. Good Friday—its name derives from the Old High German "kara," meaning lament and mourning—marks the darkest point in Christian salvation history: the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. Around the third hour of the afternoon, the Gospels recount, he gave up his spirit, and darkness fell over the land. And yet, hidden within this darkness lies the promise of Easter morning, that morning when the tomb will be empty and the world will have been fundamentally transformed.

Easter is the oldest and most important festival of Christendom, even older than Christmas in its liturgical significance. In 325 AD, the Council of Nicaea fixed the date of Easter as the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring – a rule that still applies today and ensures that Easter falls on a date that varies between March 22nd and April 25th. There is something fitting in this variation: Easter cannot be fixed, cannot be domesticated. It bursts forth like spring itself.

The Roots of the Festival

The origins of Easter reach deeper than Christianity itself. The name "Easter" likely derives from the Proto-Germanic word "austron," related to dawn and east, the direction of sunrise. The Anglo-Saxon goddess Ēostre, mentioned by the church historian Bede the Venerable in the eighth century, may or may not have played a role. What is certain is that Christian resurrection theology and pre-Christian spring celebrations merged into a festival that is unique in its complexity.

In the Catholic faith, the Easter Vigil marks the high point of the liturgical year. In the darkened church, the Easter candle is lit—a custom that dates back to late antiquity, when, around the year 750, the pagan fire symbolism of the solstice fire was transferred to Christian liturgy in the Frankish kingdom. The Lumen Christi, the light of Christ, breaks through the darkness, and the priest proclaims the Exsultet, the ancient hymn of praise for the Easter Vigil. For devout Catholics, nothing less than the redemption of humanity is taking place: Christ has conquered death, the tomb is empty, the world is new. On Easter Sunday, the Pope pronounces the blessing "Urbi et Orbi," to the city and the world, thus affirming the universal claim of this message. The Easter lamb, which adorns the table as a lamb-shaped cake, points to the deep connection with the Jewish Passover festival: Just as the Israelites slaughtered a lamb on the night of their exodus from Egypt and smeared its blood on the doorposts, so Christ became the "Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world," as it says in the Gospel of John.

A Festival Through the Ages

Anyone who compares today's Easter with that of around 1900 will recognize profound changes—and surprising continuities. In the German Empire, Easter was still a festival of undisputed religious authority. Attending church on Good Friday and Easter Sunday was a social obligation, Lent was observed more strictly, and Easter confession was a matter of course for Catholics, never questioned. In the villages of Bavaria and the Rhineland, the church bells fell silent on Maundy Thursday—legend had it they flew to Rome to visit the Pope—and children went through the streets with wooden rattles and clappers to call the faithful to prayer.

The Easter postcard, which first appeared in Thuringia around 1900, became the medium of a new bourgeois Easter culture: chicks, lambs, and children with egg baskets adorned the cards, which were sent by the millions during the Imperial era. It was the era in which piety and consumer culture first became intimately intertwined. The Easter Bunny itself, which the medical professor Georg Franck von Franckenau had already mentioned in his 1682 dissertation "De ovis paschalibus – On Easter Eggs," experienced its definitive breakthrough at the end of the nineteenth century – as a toy, a picture book hero, and a chocolate figure. Previously, depending on the region, the fox, raven, cuckoo, or stork had brought the eggs; in the Vosges Mountains, it was said that the church bells flew to Rome on Maundy Thursday and brought back the Easter eggs. Only the flourishing confectionery industry of the German Empire helped the bunny achieve a monopoly, which it has defended unchallenged to this day.

Today, Easter in Germany is a festival of ambivalence. Church pews have been emptying for decades, church membership is declining at record highs, and for a growing number of people, the long weekend is primarily a welcome opportunity for short breaks and family visits. Good Friday, on which dancing is strictly prohibited in Germany, is perceived by many as an anachronistic imposition – and by others as a necessary space for silence in a restless world. At the same time, surveys show that Easter traditions – dyeing eggs, egg hunts in the garden, the Easter bonfire, the Sunday roast – are still observed unchanged, even in families with little connection to the Christian faith. Easter, much like Christmas, has transformed into a cultural festival that overlays religious and secular layers without either completely displacing the other.

Egg Cracking and Easter Riders

The diversity of German Easter customs forms a unique cultural landscape, whose regional differences have been preserved to this day. In the north, especially in East Frisia, the tradition of "Eierbicken" or "Eierditschen" is observed: Two hard-boiled eggs are tapped against each other, and whoever's shell remains intact wins the opponent's egg – a custom that can be traced back to the fourteenth century. On the North Sea coast, on the islands of Föhr and Sylt, children throw their Easter eggs into the air and call down blessings in Frisian, wishing them a safe return.

In southern Germany, festive Easter processions dominate, such as the Georgiritt in Traunstein, where festively adorned riders parade through the town. In Franconia and the Eifel region, loud rattling and clattering replace church bells during Holy Week – these so-called rattles call the faithful to prayer while the bells are silent. In the east, in the Saxon and Brandenburgian Lusatia region, one finds perhaps the most impressive of all German Easter customs: the Sorbian Easter procession. Around 1,500 Catholic men in frock coats and top hats ride on magnificently decorated horses from village to village on Easter Sunday, singing and proclaiming the resurrection of Christ – a custom that may date back to pre-Christian field processions to protect the crops, and whose oldest written records reach back to the fifteenth century.

Finally, in the west, in Aachen, despite the Lenten season, people swear by the Poschweck, a sweet Easter bread whose aroma wafts from the bakeries and which is eaten with jam or – more unexpectedly – ​​with spicy liverwurst. Near the Danish border in North Schleswig, they have the Gækkebrev, the fool's letter: anonymously sent poems whose sender the recipient must guess, otherwise they owe a chocolate egg. This regional diversity shows that Easter in Germany has never been a uniform festival, but always a mosaic of local traditions, Christian liturgy and pre-Christian heritage.

Easter in the Poet's Study

No German-language poet has captured Easter in such an unforgettable way as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. His "Easter Walk," that monologue of Doctor Faust in the scene "Before the Gate" from Part One of the tragedy, is a cornerstone of the German literary canon. Goethe only integrated the verses into the third version of his magnum opus in 1808—they are absent from the Urfaust as well as the fragment of 1790. Faust, who just hours before had contemplated suicide, observes the people streaming out of the narrow streets into the open air on Easter Sunday and recognizes in their departure a reflection of the Resurrection: The people are not only celebrating the Lord's resurrection—they themselves have risen, from the gloomy rooms of humble houses, from the suffocating confines of the streets. Humanity rises up, and in the end comes that exclamation which has become a proverbial saying: "Here I am human, here I may be so!"

Faust, who just hours before had contemplated suicide, observes the people streaming out of the narrow streets into the open air on Easter Sunday and recognizes in their departure a reflection of the Resurrection: The people are not only celebrating the Lord's resurrection—they themselves have risen, from the gloomy rooms of humble houses, from the suffocating narrowness of the streets. Humanity is rising up, and in the end there is that exclamation which has become a proverbial saying: "Here I am human, here I may be so!"

Besides Goethe, a whole host of German-language poets have made Easter the subject of their writing. In his poem "Easter," Joseph von Eichendorff captured the interplay of sorrow and jubilation in an image of poignant beauty: From the cathedral, mournful bells toll, from the valley, shouts of joy rise, and in this contrast, the poet recognizes a profound springtime shiver, like a day of resurrection. Theodor Storm, the Protestant North German, listened to the sound of Easter bells on the sea dike. Rainer Maria Rilke, who remained skeptical of Christianity throughout his life, created with his poem "The Risen One" a surprisingly tender meditation on Mary Magdalene and the resurrected Christ. And Heinrich Heine, the satirist from the Rhineland, sang of the blue eyes of spring and the song of spring, without grappling with the theology of the festival.

Theodor Storm, the Protestant North German, listened to the sound of Easter bells on the sea dike. Rainer Maria Rilke, who remained skeptical of Christianity throughout his life, created with his poem "The Risen One" an astonishingly tender meditation on Mary Magdalene and the resurrected Christ. German-language literature has not, of course, produced an Easter novel in the strictest sense – unlike Christmas, for example, which has been exploited in literary works from Dickens to Fontane to Thomas Mann. Yet Goethe's Faust is, if you will, the great Easter novel of world literature: the entire drama begins on Easter night, when the bells prevent Faust from committing suicide and when that wager with Mephistopheles begins, a wager that explores the very core of humanity.

The Longing for Renewal

What does the Easter idea mean in a time marked by wars and social polarization? Perhaps more than ever before. The resurrection doesn't have to be taken literally to feel its power. As a metaphor for a new beginning, for the refusal to accept the status quo, for faith in the light in the deepest darkness—as such a metaphor, the Easter idea possesses timeless validity.

Philosophy has formulated this intuition in its own way. Ernst Bloch spoke of the "principle of hope," of "docta spes," learned hope, which knows darkness and yet seeks the light. Camus found an Easter idea avant la lettre in his Sisyphus: the human being who repeatedly rolls the stone up the mountain and yet does not despair, because one must imagine Sisyphus as a happy man.

In a society increasingly groaning under the weight of its own complexity, the Easter tradition – the gathering of family, the shared search and discovery, the lighting of a fire against the cold – may, in its very simplicity, offer an answer. Not the answer to the big questions, but a ritual of reflection, a moment of connection that transcends the individual.

The Light of Easter Morning

When the candles are lit in the churches on Easter night, when the Sorbian Easter procession winds its way through Lusatia, when children search for colorful eggs in the garden, and when Easter bonfires blaze along the coasts of Northern Germany—then an ancient pattern repeats itself: the transition from darkness to light, from winter to spring, from death to life. One doesn't have to be a Christian to feel the depth of this rhythm. One only has to be human.

Goethe knew it when he had his broken scholar emerge from his study on Easter morning. Eichendorff knew it when he recognized the stirrings of spring in the clash of mournful bells and the jubilant song of larks. And perhaps we, too, know it when we pause this Good Friday and remember that after every darkness comes a morning—not despite the darkness, but through it.

The theologian and resistance fighter Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who himself was murdered by the Nazis on April 9, 1945, just weeks before the end of the war, wrote words from prison that have lost none of their relevance: "By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered, and confidently waiting, come what may." It is as if he had captured the essence of the Easter message in a single sentence – that confidence which is not based on proof, but on the age-old, indestructible intuition that the light is stronger than the darkness. In this spirit: a blessed Easter.

Sapere aude!

S. 

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