Happy Easter

The 50-day period following Easter Sunday is called Eastertide and includes a celebration of Jesus' ascension into heaven.

Easter celebrates Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead. It is Christianity’s most important holiday.

Christian churches in the West celebrate Easter on the first Sunday following the full moon after the vernal equinox on March 21. Easter is observed anywhere between March 22 and April 25 every year.

Orthodox Christians use the Julian calendar to calculate when Easter will occur and typically celebrate the holiday a week or two after the Western churches, which follow the Gregorian calendar.

Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection occurred after he went to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover (or Pesach in Hebrew), the Jewish festival commemorating the ancient Israelites’ exodus from slavery in Egypt. Pascha eventually came to mean Easter.

Easter is really an entire season of the Christian church year, as opposed to a single-day observance. Lent, the 40-day period leading up to Easter Sunday, is a time of reflection and penance and represents the 40 days that Jesus spent alone in the wilderness before starting his ministry, a time in which Christians believe he survived various temptations by the devil.

The day before Lent, known as Fat Tuesday, is a last hurrah of food and fun before the fasting begins.

The week preceding Easter is called Holy Week and includes Maundy Thursday, which commemorates Jesus’ last supper with his disciples; Good Friday, which honors the day of his crucifixion; and Holy Saturday, which focuses on the transition between the crucifixion and resurrection.

The 50-day period following Easter Sunday is called Eastertide and includes a celebration of Jesus’ ascension into heaven.

In the Hispanic world, the Holy Week of Easter is the most important Catholic religious festival in South America. Semana Santa, Holy Week, celebrates the last days of Christ’s life, the Crucifixion and Resurrection, as well as the end of Lent.

Semana Santa is observed with a range of celebrations, from the most solemnly religious, to a mix of pagan/Catholic, to commercial.

Semana Santa begins on Domingo de Ramos (Palm Sunday) through Domingo de Resurrección (Easter Sunday). Each day has its rituals, processions through the streets with participants on their knees or carrying large wooden crosses.

There are masses and religious observations, prayer meetings, and thousands of devout Catholics doing homage.

In many communities, the full Passion Play is enacted from the Last Supper, the Betrayal, the Judgment, the Procession of the 12 Stations of the Cross, the Crucifixion and, finally, the Resurrection. Participants are costumed and play their parts with reverence.

This Easter 2010 Pope Benedict XVI’s liturgical celebrations of Holy Week and Easter will be broadcast live on the internet.

Internet users will have access to live broadcasts from St. Peter’s Square, pictures and other on-line news reports. They can choose to listen to live audio commentaries in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish.

The broadcasts are a multimedia initiative of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, launched in May to bring Pope Benedict’s message to young people.

The broadcasts were brought about by Pope2You, and H2oNews, a Catholic multimedia news agency which is collaborating with the Vatican Television Centre and the Holy See’s internet service.

The Americano / Agencies