As attendance at this service may fulfill a lifelong religious goal, some attendees have a special tattoo inscribed on their right inner wrist, usually consisting of the date of the pilgrimage and a cross. Roman Catholics as well as certain Protestants also observe an Easter Vigil ceremony whereby every member of the congregation lights a candle from the newly kindled flame.
Roman Catholics, however, adopted this ceremony in the s. The Roman Catholic ceremony involves the use of the paschal candle, which is lit first and then provides the flame with which to light the other candles. Pre-Christian May Fires in Europe Some writers believe that the Christian new fire ceremony, the lighting of the paschal candles, and related Easter fire folk customs have their roots in pagan as well as Christian beliefs.
In northwestern Europe, pre-Christian religious rituals encouraged the lighting of ceremonial fires around Easter time. Some researchers believe that people in this region of Europe observed a festival on the first of May, known as Beltane in the British Isles, that celebrated the opening of the summer pasture lands to grazing animals see also May Day.
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In observance of this festival they built a pair of bonfires and drove their cattle between them, in a ritual which they believed would purify the cattle and protect them from harmful forces. In Germanic and Scandinavian lands, the festival survived in a transformed fashion into Christian times, when it became known as Walpurgis Night. People lit bonfires on this night to frighten away witches, who were presumed to be especially active on this evening see also Easter Witch.
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The missionaries who labored to spread Christianity in this region of Europe disapproved of the local inhabitants'springtime fires, but were unable to convince people to abandon this old practice. According to legend St.
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Patrick, who set about converting Ireland to Christianity in the fifth century, provided a solution to this problem by adopting the flaming stacks as Easter bonfires. By the ninth century the Easter bonfire had been incorporated into the liturgy of the Western Church, where it was used to light the paschal candle. Roman Catholics continue to observe this old custom, although some parishes ignite the Easter fire in a brazier inside the church itself rather than build a bonfire out of doors.
These Easter bonfires continue in some places, including the town of Luegde, Germany, where inhabitants pull wheels of wood and straw, nearly six feet in diameter, to the top of a hill, set them aflame, and send them crashing downhill towards the river Emmer. Researchers investigating old, seasonal traditions in northwestern Europe have uncovered many folk customs involving these rolling wheels of fire, and believe that the custom dates back to ancient times.
Some folklorists view the blazing wheels as symbolic of the sun. They suspect that unloosing these rolling torches may at one time have been thought to ensure the smooth progress of the solar year from the short, dark days of winter to the longer, brighter days of spring. In many parts of western Europe old folk traditions reminded householders to extinguish all fires on Holy Saturday so that they might be replaced with flame kindled and blessed at the Easter Vigil service.
In central Europe, many families living in and around the Alps extinguished all flames in their homes at three o'clock in the afternoon on Good Friday. The family endured the cold and dark until flames were brought home from the new fire ceremony on Holy Saturday. In the former Yugoslavia tradition assigned young boys the task of bringing the new fire home from the Easter Vigil. Armed with a slowburning forest fungus, the boys waited until the priest blessed the new fire, then pressed forward to light their fungal torches. They dashed home with the new fire, where their parents would re-light the hearth and lamps with the holy flames.
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Further Reading Aivazian, Sirarpi Feredjian. The Encyclopedia of Religion. Dictionary of Biblical Imagery. The New Golden Bough. The Folklore of World Holidays. Henderson, Helene, and Sue Ellen Thompson, eds. Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations of the World Dictionary.
Easter Fires
Stations of the Sun. Oxford University Press, Fire and Light in the Western Triduum. Thames and Hudson, The Week of Salvation. Over the past years, Easter Fires themselves have become larger and developed to smaller versions of Volksfests in Northern Germany with some snack stands selling Bratwurst , steak in bread rolls, beer, wine, and soft drinks as well as minor rides for children. In the East Alpine regions of Austria , fires are traditionally part of Easter Vigil celebrations and usually lit widely visible on mountain slopes.
Nevertheless, they are also restricted in some cities and districts to hold down the resulting annual peak of particulates immission. Some municipalities in the Netherlands hold an annual competition to build the highest, or the neatest fire.
The hamlet of Espelo in the municipality of Rijssen-Holten holds the world record with an Easter fire that measured Most of these fires take place in the provinces of Drenthe , Groningen , and Gelderland , with the largest being in Twente , a part of Overijssel. In Fredericksburg, Texas , each year the residents have Easter Fires the night before Easter, commemorating a peace treaty with the Comanche Indians.
In when the original treaty was signed, the Comanches lit signal fires on the area hills.
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One mother calmed her children's fears, telling them the smoke came from the Easter Bunny who was dyeing eggs. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved from " https: Many Fredericksburgers, therefore, believe the Easter Fires are an indigenous custom linked to the founding of their town.
In reality, the Easter Fires have a much more ancient history. The people of northwestern Germany, especially in the provinces of Westphalia and Lower Saxony, practice an identical custom of lighting Easter-eve fires on specified hills.
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The practice originated in preChristian times as part of a spring festival and, along with the rabbit and egg, represents pagan customs that passed intact into Teutonic Christianity. The German provinces where Easter Fires occur contributed almost half of the settlers who came to the Texas Hill Country. The most likely agents of diffusion were Hanoverians, one of the two largest groups in early Fredericksburg. Perhaps these two major events in Fredericksburg's first spring later merged in the popular mind, or possibly the initial Easter Fires frightened German children from Hesse or some other southern province where the custom was unknown.
In any case, the Old World origin of the fires is incontestable. Francis Edward Abernethy and Dan Beaty, eds. Meusebach, German Colonizer in Texas Austin: University of Texas Press,