Betrayals

The Easter story has always been the best in the Bible. There is, as mentioned below, death and rebirth. There's blood and sacrifice and suffering and blood. There's a great deal of blood, in fact. It's no wonder that Mel Gibson, in his Passion of the Christ, was able to make a previously unseen link between the Gospels and Quentin Tarentino.

More importantly the Easter story also has a wide range of human actions. Mostly of the worst kind. There's the fickleness of crowds, the feebleness of conciliatory politicians. There are crises of faith everywhere. There's even a crisis of faith from the son of God, for heaven's sake; an astonishing passage even in a text which breaks many rules of what you should do when establishing a new religion. Above all else, there are betrayals. Judas', of course. Even though Jeffrey Archer is currently peddling line, I still believe that Judas has been slightly harshly treated by posterity. He was basically a cipher after all, taking Jesus to a death which was necessary for human salvation. Besides, Judas wasn't alone. Everyone let Jesus down ultimately.

The Easter story has also inspired the best art. There are some decent images of Jesus' birth. But all painters of the Nativity succumb, to one degree or another, to an impulse known as "Ooooh, it's a liddle baby!" This sort of tweeness isn't possible in the cynicism leading up to the Crucifixion, the brutality of the event and the miracle afterwards. Pieter Brugel lashed out at the crowds in The Procession To Calvary, his astonishing depiction of the Crucifixion treated as a Sunday outing. (Pontificated on in more detail in an earlier posting.) Caravaggio played to his strengths too, showing a dark and disturbing Flagellation Of Christ by two satanic guards. Blood is missing from Andrea Mantegna's painting but only because it's all already drained from The Dead Christ; Jesus is as grey as a crypt, four gruesome holes in his body. There isn't, in fact, much optimism in most of the Easter paintings. The focus is on what we lost, not on what we've supposedly gained.

Especially in one of the defining images, Leonardo's The Last Supper. The last stage in Jesus' fatalistic trudge towards his death. The painting captures perfectly the poignancy of the event; and it anticipates the betrayals to come. Leonardo was superb at the precisely ordered group portrait and here it becomes more than an academic demonstration. Jesus sits at the head of the table and the centre of the picture, surrounded by his disciples. He sits alone, however. Those nearest him are leaning or even recoiling away. The ones on the fringes are staring at him, gossiping amongst themselves; but nobody is addressing him directly. He has lost them and he knows this. His face downturned, he spreads his hands out hopelessly. Jesus seems to be asking, what more can I do for you? Die for them – and Leonardo paints this as if it means he's failed.

It's a very human story, the Easter one. There's no constant interaction with a booming voice from the heavens. There's just a religious leader, a little too perfect for his or any other time. One who's betrayed and finally, torn apart by pain, seems to lose his own faith. It's a tragic tale too, the triumph of malice and avarice, and sometimes the Resurrection almost feels like a happy ending tacked on rather artificially. That's not the proper interpretation, I know, but maybe it's an excusable one. Because we do betray our saints and we do excuse our crooks. (Hello Mr Archer and pass on my regards to your new best mate, the Pope.) We do fail because of pettiness or greed or cowardice. We do it all the time and that's probably why somebody had to get himself nailed to a cross to redeem us.

All Your Easter Eggs In One Basket

It was just a story heard in a pub so I'm not sure if it's true. I'd like to think so, however. A supermarket recently claimed we had forgotten the true meaning of Easter eggs. They symbolise the rebirth of Christ, apparently. And so, by extension, buying and gorging mounds of chocolate at this time of year is our holy duty. Actual Christians complained about this so loudly that the supermarket was forced to apologise.

We thought that they weren't creative enough. They could have said, for example, that the crucifix was actually oval shaped. Or perhaps Jesus himself was. Why stop, too, with appropriating eggs? Take the Easter Bunny, for example. Perhaps this came about because when Christ rose from the tomb, he hop-hoppity-hopped away from it.

Of course eggs and bunnies aren't Christian images. They are pagan ones, just like holly and mistletoe and fir trees. There was a festival at springtime and another in midwinter long before Christianity emerged. They were linked directly to the seasons and their symbols reflect this. The winter ones are reassurances, plants which remain green when everything else has died. In spring comes a celebration, images of life and rebirth. The eggs are obvious, a more direct and less gooey substitute for the womb. The Easter bunny began as the March hare, which was rather mystifyingly given great significance by the old religions. The two are linked, incidentally; it was believed that hares hatched from eggs. Which were laid by lapwings, it seems, on the basis that both creatures live in fields. Clear logic was something else yet to appear in these societies.

It's obvious why the early Christian church appropriated the old festivals. The missionaries were doing a selling job. They wanted to give people something clearly recognisable and which didn't interfere with their pleasures too much. The Nativity didn't quite fit with the old solstice festival but did offer a cause for a straightforward celebration, something always needed in the middle of a grim winter. The Easter story, meanwhile, is perfect for spring. At its heart is death and rebirth. Jesus falls, lies in a tomb and rises again. You can take that, on one level, as a metaphor for the crops withering in autumn and miraculously springing to life again when the seasons change.

There are some Christians who don't like this. Now they've got the old festivals, they want to strip the last remaining pagan symbols from them. Get the Christmas trees out of Christmas, the Easter eggs out of Easter. Let's focus on what really matters. This always strikes me as rather ungrateful, turning on your sponsors when you no longer need them. It's a peculiarly irreligious attitude too. After all, holy events aren't just ones which happened two thousand years ago to a narrow cast of characters. Look at other images of Easter: daffodils, blossom, fluffy chicks. They can be rather hard to take on a full stomach, but in their purest form they are symbols of life. Life suddenly bursting out, life at its most unexpected and glorious. And if you can't see the touch of God in these constant miracles, what exactly is the point in believing in Him?