Taking a look at Easter in Ireland

MY DAUGHTER, Roisín asked me recently what I thought was a fairly logical question. Why does the date that Easter falls on change each year? And the answer is simple; because it’s a ‘moveable feast’ based on the lunar calendar and not a fixed date like Christmas. It falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon—the paschal full moon—following the vernal equinox on March 21. The word paschal derives from the Hebrew word pesach, meaning Passover. In the Bible it signifies the ‘paschal lamb’ and the event of God’s judgment passing over the faithful. The Paschal mystery centres on Jesus’ Passion, Death, and Resurrection, marking Him as the final sacrifice. So, because the full moons vary, this means Easter can fall anytime in between March 22 and April 25. So there’s your answer. But I’m sure you all knew that anyway.

Traditions

I was sending a wee card to my Auntie Margaret in Ranafast, so I thought I must check how you say ‘Happy Easter’ as Gaelige. And sure enough the Irish have such a beautiful and eloquent translation, ‘Beannachtaí na Cásca oraibh,’ which means ‘The blessings of Easter to you!’ Isn’t that lovely? Needless to say, I ended up down a rabbit hole—no Easter pun intended—with all the Easter traditions and folklore that have emanated from our wonderful country, some of which are still practised, and others I’d never heard of before.

For a long time, Ireland at Easter was associated not only with the Resurrection of Christ, but with the remembrance of the Easter Rising of 1916 when the Irish rebels fought for independence. Easter is now more associated with holidays and is still, along with Christmas and St Patrick’s Day, an important one, when children across the country are delighted to have an impressive two weeks off school!

Although Irish children in years gone by would have had much healthier treats and not the Cadbury’s variety that we enjoy today. And by God they worked hard for their supper as they spent the first days of their school holidays in Holy Week building an Easter house. The Easter house was built up to around three feet in height. It was generally made of sticks and sod and whatever else they could get their hands on. They would make a circular building then place stones in the middle and build a fire. They would then go about collecting fresh eggs, which, during Lent, were not allowed to be eaten until Easter Sunday. In some parts of the county, children would go round their neighbourhood door-to-door, much as they would at Halloween, however, this time they’d be wearing aprons and carrying baskets looking for eggs—this was called gugging—for their feast, which was known as Clúdóg. They would then light the fire within the Easter house and boil their eggs over the open fire. Sometimes they’d be decorated with wax, natural dyes and string. You can just imagine the fun of an alfresco egg Easter feast.

The children would also keep the eggshells from their feast to decorate their May bush later in the season, marking the ancient festival of Bealtaine. Bealtaine is the point mid-way between the spring equinox and the summer solstice, Lá Bealtaine at the start of May is an ancient celebration of the ‘rekindling’ of the sun to welcome back real warmth with longer days and shorter nights. I tell you, looking out at the weather we have at the moment, I can only dream of warmer days. I’m sure I saw four seasons in one day yesterday.

Changing celebrations

But it wasn’t just the children who were in high spirits. The adults were fit to join in the shenanigans too, at least they were since 2018. From 1927, the Intoxicating Liquor Act prohibited pubs from serving alcohol on Good Friday, leading to plenty of ‘dry’ celebrations and gatherings and lots of extremely confused tourists wandering around Irish villages and towns looking for a cosy wee pub with an open fire and a Guinness on the counter. It was only in 2018 that the law was repealed, breaking a tradition of over 90 years. Nowadays visitors to Ireland and the locals too can have a ‘sneaky pint’ in most pubs on Good Friday.

But an alcohol-free Good Friday isn’t the only Easter tradition changing in modern Ireland. Good Fridays were traditionally a quiet day for fasting, attending church and the Stations of the Cross. Most workplaces were closed and not that long ago, even the TV and radio were off air. Can you imagine that in these times? I’m of an age now when I remember the pubs remained closed on a Sunday because it was my daddy’s only day off and I always understood that this ran hand in hand with ‘keeping the Sabbath day holy.’ It was a day for visiting family and going for a run in the car and maybe a nice lunch. It was a day for reading the Sunday papers and waiting for roast chicken and cabbage and spuds to land on the table. There wouldn’t be any shops opened in town, there’d be no football matches on and generally speaking it was a quiet family day. Now we have pubs and shops and gyms and football matches, cinemas and all sorts open on a Sunday.

Simpler times

But have we got it right? Or have we gone down a road where materialism and self-indulgent distractions have taken precedence? Have we lost the basis of what is central to a good family life? Are we sacrificing ourselves to all of these other available distractions? Call me old fashioned but I’d rather have Sunday honoured as a day of rest and respect the ethos behind it. It seems to me that there are no days of rest and we are all operating at a pace of needing to cram everything in. After all, the mind requires rest just as much as the physical body.

For most Irish Catholics, after a long Lenten fast where meat was strictly off the menu, many local butchers—especially in the south of Ireland—would hold a mock funeral for a herring. This was hilarious news to me. The butcher would march through the town with the fish tied to a pole where it would be whipped by the locals (above). Seems this was a tradition of saying goodbye to eating so much fish during Lent and everyone looking forward to breaking their meat fast on Easter Sunday with a hearty roast beef or leg of lamb for dinner. Easter was about indulgence. But all of that food needed to be worked off at an Easter Dance contest. Everyone gathered together and people would aim to win, simply by outdancing all of the other participants, or by being a particularly good dancer. And the prize? This came in the form of more food—a beautifully decorated Easter cake would be baked just for the occasion!

Something else I’d never heard of was ‘Sun Dancing.’ There is an archive of Irish folklore collected from schoolchildren dating back to the 1930’s, where they wrote about rising early on Easter Sunday morning to watch the sun dance on the horizon. This was a tradition that dates back to pre-Christian times, particularly in rural areas with people believing the sun would dance and leap with joy to mark the Resurrection. It was a widespread belief that the sun appeared to move in a ‘dance’ as it rose. People got up at dawn to watch this, often from hills or by looking at reflections in water to celebrate and predict a sunny year ahead.

At this stage I’d simply like a glimpse of sun, never mind see it dance! But this Easter I’ll remain in my thermals and geansaí.

L J Sexton, mum of four, returned to university to pursue her passion for the written word. She achieved her Honours Degree in English Literature and Creative Writing and hasn't stopped writing since. Lyn is born of Irish parents and lived in Donegal for eight years. She is also the press officer for Irish Minstrels CCÉ music group based in St Roch’s Secondary School