Celebrating an Autumn Easter
Southern Ocean Ideas for Claiming the Festival
Holidays such as Easter seem strange when the seasons are turned around, but there are ways to tap into their meaning and make them memorable.
Melting snow, first warm sun, crocuses pushing through the wet earth. All signs that Easter is on its way.
Well, no, not for people living in equatorial regions or the southern hemisphere, where Easter feels very different. If you live in the southern half of the world, what can you do to make a spring festival have meaning in the autumn?
Here are ideas, some based on earth-honouring traditions, that you may find useful wherever on the planet you make your home.
Consider the Deeper Reasons for the Festival
In the North Island of New Zealand, as an example of a place where spring and Easter do not coincide, birds are feasting on “monkey tails” and fallen seeds the trees have dropped in March and April, preparing for the cold season. Cicadas, insects that chorus in their thousands at the end of summer, are starting to fall silent. In the South Island, deciduous trees are putting on colour shows much like Vermont in November.
Eostre, the Teutonic goddess after whom Easter was named, was a goddess of the rising sun. It may seem that this festival of light, Easter bunnies and Easter eggs (symbolising new life and in the Christian tradition, resurrection and redemption) are out of place in the southern oceans.
But in fact, a lot of new beginnings are made in the autumn. Children and young people return to school. Cooler weather brings new energy and a flowering of arts and community festivals. As Cait Johnson and Maura D. Shaw observed, “all of us have had times of stasis and inaction that felt as if they would never end” (Celebrating the Great Mother: A Handbook of Earth-Honouring Activities for Parents and Children. Rochester: Destiny Books 1995). Perhaps Easter could be celebrated as an end to the laid-back but passive days of summer, a time for renewal of energy and creativity.
Use the Festival to Celebrate Your Own Seasons
An alternative or perhaps complementary approach involves looking closely at what is happening at Easter in your part of the natural world. Even if you live close to the equator, there will be changes thoughout the year, a wet and dry season, different plants in fruit and flower. Re-discovering an empathy with the earth has been described as fundamental to our addressing critical environmental issues, and is a good basis for year-round positive thinking.
So, if you are not seeing many signs of rebirth, perhaps the harvest is the thing to celebrate, the picking of grapes in the vineyards, the sweetcorn and avocado and pumpkin in the markets. Johnson and Shaw describe a Mabon festival, named for a Celtic god of death and regeneration, that could be adapted for the autumnal equinox. Persephone put an end to the summer by descending to Hades, according to Greek legend, but there she became a queen. Johnson and Shaw suggest at this time of year reflecting on one’s personal “harvests” and accomplishments.
Learn the Seasonal Traditions of Indigenous Peoples in Your Area
For New Zealand Maori, autumn was when the Poututerangi star came into view. Much ritual surrounded inspection of the kumara crop and celebrations were held when it was judged ready for harvest. Juliet Batten’s Celebrating the Southern Seasons: Rituals for Aotearoa, revised in 2005 and published by Random House, is a good sourcebook for Maori and European seasonal ceremonies. There are also many resources on the traditions of North American first peoples likely to be available in your local bookstore or library.
In The Book of the Year: A Brief History of our Seasonal Holidays (Oxford University Press, 2003) A.F. Aveni observes that special-day celebrations have changed across the world and throughout history. Moreover, “the rites behind the days change with our cultural and psychological needs” which are different at different times of year. It sounds like a good reason to make the festival of Easter—whether it happens in spring or in autumn—your own.
