By H H Mohrmen
This year is unique because the celebration of important spring festivals, Easter, Passover or Pesach and Chad Sukra of the traditional religion in Jaintia hills all coincide on the same date. It is not common for the dates of these important festivals to coincide especially when calculation for the dates to celebrate Easter was made to ensure that it does not clash with that of the Passover. This is precisely the reason to celebrate this rare occasion and no matter whether you are a Jew, a Christian or a follower of Niamtre or follower of any religion, this coincidence gives us reason to observe the festivals with a joyful heart.
Passover or Pesach is an annual Jewish festival which is celebrated to commemorate the liberation of the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt. This festival commemorates the occasion when Israelites finally attained freedom from the tyranny of Pharaoh under the leadership of Moses. The festival is celebrated to commemorate the story in the book of Exodus which is one of the first five books of the Torah. Torah is the holy book of the Jews or what the scholars also call the Hebrew Bible. And later when the holy book of Christians was canonized the Torah was also incorporated into the Christian Bible and the book is called the Old Testament in the Christian Bible.
The English name of the festival derives from the last of the tenth plague that God had inflicted on Egyptians to compel the Pharaoh to set the Israelites free. In the narrative it was said that before God sent his spirit to kill the first born of the Egyptians, he instructed all the Israelites to slaughter a spring lamp and mark the lintel of their houses with the blood of the lamp. When the spirit passes through the area, upon seeing the bloodstained door post, it will pass over and save the firstborn of the house hence the English name Passover of the festival.
Pesach or Passover is celebrated on the fifteenth day of Nisan in a Jewish calendar and since according to Jewish tradition; the day starts at dusk and ends at the dusk of another day, the celebration of Pesach actually starts at the sunset of the fourteenth day of Nisan. According to Jewish calendar which is also a luni-solar calendar, the fifteenth of Nisan should always start on the first full moon evening after vernal equinox. Scholars of early Christian period also believed that Jesus being a Jews himself till the last, celebrated this same festival of Passover when he was captured, put to trial and crucified.
In the Jewish tradition it was customary to offer a sacrificial lamb while celebrating Passover. Families would sacrifice a lamb on the evening of the fourteenth of Nisan and eat the feast with an unleavened bread and bitter herbs to remind them of the immediate departure from Egypt and the hardship that their ancestors endured. The Hebrew word Pesach also means lamb or goat which was meant for sacrifice during Passover and therefore it is called Koban Pesach in Hebrew. In contrast, in the Christian tradition the celebration of Easter is the celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the symbolic offering of the ultimate sacrificial lamb, in the person of Jesus the only Son of God and his ultimate rise from the dead. It would also be of interest to know if the symbolic representation of the festival as recorded in the Christian scripture of replacing the Jewish Sacrificial lamb or the Koban Pesach with Jesus is sheer coincidence.
The immediate followers of Jesus were Jews themselves who still follow Jewish traditions and still celebrate Passover. When Christianity spread to Europe the native people in the area already had their own spring festival which they called Easter/Eostre and which is celebrated around the same time of the year. For many years there was no uniformity in the dates when the Early Christians celebrated Easter. It was only three hundred years after the death of Jesus Christ that a council decided to put a stop to this practice and decided on a formula to calculate the days of the year to celebrate the holy week.
It was in the Council in Nicaea in 325 (Common Era) convened by a recent convert Constantine who was also a great Roman emperor when the date for celebration of Easter was settled. In the first Council of Nicaea the Church had not only settled on the Christological issue. The nature of the Son of God and his relation with God the Father but the church was also able to construct a common dogma known as the Nicene Creed. The last but not the least achievement of the first ecumenical council was the fact that the council was able to decide on the method on how to arrive at the dates to celebrate Easter. Since then Easter is always celebrated after the vernal equinox (March 21) of every year. The first Sunday after first full moon after March 21 is the Sunday that the church celebrates Easter. Easter dates depend on how soon the full moon appears after the 21st of March because the Sunday after the full moon is Easter. That is also precisely the reason why unlike Christmas, Easter is not celebrated on a fixed date, but instead it is celebrated on different dates which vary between 21 March to 21 April of the year.
Chad Sukra is an annual festival of the Jaintia people to celebrate the coming of spring. The Pnar of Jaintia hills are farmers so most of the festivals they celebrate are connected with the agrarian culture of the people. Chad Sukra is also a festival to celebrate the sowing season and rice being the major crop of the people in the area, therefore the festival is also part of the preparation for sowing season, before the farmers drop the first seeds on the bosom of mother earth.
The celebration varies from one Raid to another, but the common feature of the celebration is the drama festival which culminates on the closing day call mih-ïaw. In the Raid Jowai the last day or the mih-ïaw is the day when people in their best traditional fineries march in a procession which starts from Iaw Iongpiah to Iawmusiang. On reaching Iawmusiang, different communities showcase their cultural dances which comprises of chad pliang, chad pastieh, chad rwai and others. The celebration draws to a close in the evening of the mih-ïaw day at Їawiongpiah where a competition which comprises of folks songs, modern Pnar song and drama competition is organized.
The celebration of Passover and Easter this year is unique because it was exactly like what happened during Jesus’s time; – it was the last Passover which is also the first Easter for the immediate followers of Jesus. The lasts few days of Jesus’s life on Earth when he was captured, put on trial and crucified also coincided with the Jewish festival Pesach. It was the occasion when Jesus while celebrating the feast of the unleavened bread also instituted the Last Supper and in doing so said to his followers, “Do this to remember me.” In a sense the chance that Jewish Pesach coincides with the day the Christians celebrate Easter is so much like the last days of Jesus life- when it was both Pesach and Easter at the same time.
The coincidence also makes us question about spring and ask ourselves what is so special about this season. What is it about spring that people of different races and countries celebrate the coming of this season? Why is the onset of the season celebrated (although differently) by people since ancient times? The major theme in the festivals are death and sacrifice, maybe spring is celebrated because it teaches us through Mother Nature the important lesson that we live between death and life and we might as well live life to the fullest and give as much as we can while we are still alive.