The Stories Behind Our Easter Traditions

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Go to IHeartRadio.com slash Roblox to get started today. This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. The treasured traditions of Easter, little bunnies, parades, new Easter outfits, sunrise services, passion plays, and so much more, infuse our celebration of the season with meaning and glowing memories. Best-selling author Ace Collins is here to reveal the events and backgrounds that shape the best-loved customs of Easter, introducing you to stories you've never heard and a deeper appreciation for the holiday's familiar hallmarks.

Here's best-selling author Ace Collins. Of all of the holidays that we celebrate here in the United States, there's no doubt that Easter is the oldest holiday. It may not be the oldest official holiday as far as our calendar goes, but of people who have celebrated Easter, it goes back to the very first Easter when people celebrated Christ being risen, when they met the risen Christ. And for the first generation or two after that, they would get together and visit about what happened on that day and talk to people who actually saw a risen Christ or actually saw the crucifixion or knew Christ when He walked the earth. And in that sense, it was a very, very personal holiday as opposed to something that had traditions and you did this on day, you got up on before the sun came up and went out to the cross and that you had displayed somewhere. It was an opportunity to visit with people who were there firsthand, who knew Jesus. And therefore, it wasn't as much a holiday, if you will, as it was more of a reunion of people gathering to talk about what to them were current events, recent current events. It's like probably not much different than visiting with grandparents who may have remembered Pearl Harbor as a little kid and therefore going, what was your impressions? How did you find out? What did you see?

What did you know? Or if you are black talking to somebody who knew Rosa Parks or Jackie Robinson and were there when that happened. So initially it was very much a religious holiday, but it was also a holiday where people talked about historical event that had reshaped history. And when the persecutions were going on and things like that, it was that remembrance of that holiday that gave these people the courage to embrace faith in a very open fashion, no matter what the consequences were.

You were being sought out, you were trying to be quieted, you were trying to be controlled, and yet you weren't. And so Easter therefore became a gathering of those people, sometimes in secret, after Christ's death and resurrection, so that they could actually celebrate Easter. When you look at the holiday and as it evolved, it evolved and grew after the fall of the Roman Empire to where churches met on specific days, and that was hooked into Passover, by the way, and it's so complicated we're not going to even get into how we determine when Easter is every year.

You know, I wish it was set on one holiday, but because Passover moves, it moves as well. But they understood it really well back in the Dark Ages and Middle Ages, knew when it was going to happen, and it was a day to look forward to for a couple of different reasons. One, it was a special day of church celebrations, it was a special day of gathering. There were people that you may have seen only once or twice a year that you got to see at Easter. Secondly, winter was ending, spring was beginning, and winter was harsh in many of the areas where Orthodox and Catholic Easters were celebrated in the Dark Ages and Middle Ages, and therefore a chance to get out of your house for maybe the first time, to see others, to visit with people, and a chance for children to kind of celebrate having an opportunity for the winter to go away and the promise of spring to be there. When Martin Luther nailed his document to the wall, Easter changed a little bit because a lot of Protestant groups looked at Easter and its association with pagan rituals and kind of threw it out. I mean, the Catholics still celebrated Easter, but in the United States and Great Britain, Easter was pretty much frowned upon until the 1800s. And the 1800s saw a resurgence of Easter in Protestant churches throughout Europe and the United States, and a growth of Easter celebrated as an opportunity for people together in a church. And remember, much as those early Christians did, Easter as both a historical event and Easter as a transformation of it in people's lives. And I think Easter, therefore, exists because of a transformation, a transformation experience of a man who was supposedly dead rising from the grave and taking on a new presence, and two, a transformation of individuals who accepted that faith and therefore had their lives, and in particular their point of view, transformed as they went about what they did on earth.

And that's the transformation. Knowing Christ is supposed to change you. Easter became an opportunity for people to celebrate that transformation. And you've been listening to Ace Collins tell the story of Easter. And by the way, his book is called Stories Behind the Traditions and Songs of Easter, and that's available at local bookstores or wherever you buy your books. And my goodness, what a way to think about Easter and that very first Easter celebration, because it wasn't really a celebration.

As Ace points out, it's a reunion. These people were actually there, and what a thing to have seen. And by the way, the persecution they were going to face from having seen it and were sharing it and were transformed by that experience themselves as they became believers and Christians. And by the way, the oldest, oldest holiday is Passover itself.

Three thousand years plus, Jews have been celebrating that sacred day. When we come back, more of this remarkable storytelling, the story of Easter, the story of transformation, not only of the world, but of billions of people who call themselves Christians here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns.

But we truly can't do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to our American stories dot com and click the donate button.

Give a little give a lot. Go to our American stories dot com and give MSNBC Films presents a new six part original series from NBC News Studios hosted by John Leguizamo. I wanted to do a show where people watch this and go, I want to be Latino. And you can't tell Latino stories without plenty of good food, music and dancing. So come on, let's go, let's go.

Leguizamo does America beginning Sunday, April 16th at 10 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC and streaming on Peacock. AT&T believes in the things that keep their value over time, like those expressionist paintings all our grandmas had in their living rooms, those smooth soul vinyl records that let you hear music's purest form, that good cast iron skillet that holds the secret ingredient to all those passed down recipes. The quilt your aunt intricately made by hand, a deadstock pair of sneakers and at AT&T even your old Samsung phone can have surprising value because the deal is back. Get a new Samsung Galaxy phone when you trade in your old one. There aren't a lot of things that hold their value over time, but AT&T values your Samsung. Ask how new and existing customers trade in a Galaxy phone any year, any condition, and get a free new Samsung Galaxy S23. Limited time requires trade in of Galaxy Note SZ series smartphone.

Terms and restrictions apply. See att.com for details. Chipotle's new chicken al pastor is where fire meets flavor. Starting with chicken fresh off the grill, combined into a rich marinade of seared marina peppers and ground achiote, balanced with a splash of pineapple for the right amount of heat, and finished with fresh lime and hand cut cilantro. Chipotle's new chicken al pastor is fire on every level. Only available for a limited time.

Order now in the app for pickup or delivery. Chipotle, for real. And we continue with our American stories and with Ace Collins telling the story of Easter.

Let's pick up where we last left off. If you looked at the word Christmas, it means worship Christ. I mean, there is no doubt that it is Christian in its origin. If you look at Easter, Easter is a derivative of a goddess of fertility named Ostra, Eostra, Eoster, several different pronunciations. In the United States, we most typically pronounce it Ostra. And Ostra was a goddess who looked like a rabbit, by the way, had certain rabbit features. And before there was missionaries arrived in Europe, Ostra was looked upon as this magical goddess who basically ended winter and brought forth spring. And it was a celebration of spring. Early missionaries seized upon this and used the celebration of Ostra as a celebration of the resurrection because Easter was celebrated in the spring as well. And as people converted to Christianity, they brought Ostra's feelings with them. Well, they brought that elements of the holiday, some of the things they celebrated, some of the ways they dressed.

We'll talk about eggs here in a little bit. But that became a part of the Christmas celebration of the church. And the Protestants during Reformation looked upon those things as being outside of the Bible.

They were brought in later. They had connections with things that were not Christian. And so what they did was anything that they found that looked as if you could not trace it to the New Testament, they tossed out. And so they even tried to toss out the word Easter, which missionaries had kind of developed into the celebration of Ostra and transformed that into the resurrection of Christ. They even really didn't even use the word Easter very much. The Catholics continued to use it, but the Protestants didn't. And so therefore there became a split in the church that was along the lines of Catholic and Protestant whether Easter should be celebrated or it should just be a Sunday in which you talked about the resurrection of Christ.

And so it really wasn't a holiday to many people who were Protestants up until about 1840, 1850, about the same time people who were in the Protestant movement started celebrating Christmas. It's really funny because we as people need structure. So therefore everything has to be organized.

There has to be a plan. And what you had was all these different celebrations embracing all these different things all over. It happened with Christmas. Christmas was celebrated before they decided in the third century to have Christmas. So on December 25th, Christmas was celebrated all kinds of times of the year.

Nobody had a set day for Christmas. And Easter had a lot of those same issues because there wasn't a historic date in which they could point to where Christ was crucified. So they looked at all those things and in 325 is about the same time that four years later they determined that when Christmas was going to exist. You were having to establish some type of situation in the church where everybody was celebrating holidays at the same time. Hence the church councils determined okay here is the date it's going to happen. Once again tied to the lunar cycles after the Passover. And so it's a complicated system. You can sit there and read about it.

You can Google it. You can figure out how they set those dates and then I guarantee you 10 minutes later you're going to be totally lost and forget about it. But the important thing to know is they established during that time at least a set Sunday when Easter would be celebrated. A set Friday for Good Friday. And there you at least had people celebrating the holiday at the same time as opposed to you might have in towns. One church celebrating it one day and then five months later another church celebrating it. So in that sense I think the only modern thing you can tie it to is in the 1700s when everybody in Europe and throughout the world went on the same calendar. Before that there were three or four different calendars and there was a Georgian calendar, a Julian calendar and all these people were celebrating times and dates at other times. Eventually with the advent of railroads you had to have a standard time frame across the United States for trains. It was the same kind of thing. It was not as much spiritual as it was logical.

We've got to get a handle on when we can do this and when we can coordinate it. And so historically does it have anything to do with when Jesus was crucified? We don't know that. It's just a rudimentary time that's tied with Passover, the celebration of Passover that came to a point where this is when we celebrate Easter, this is when we celebrate the resurrection. By the way if you want to know how confusing all that must have been at the time you just simply look at George Washington who everybody celebrates his birthday on February 22nd but the calendar changed after he was born. So technically he was born according to the new calendar on February 12th of a different year.

So you know that must have been confusing at that particular point. Well we've celebrated Easter this way forever and now suddenly you're telling us we have to celebrate it here in that time. And so it probably took a while for people to accept that edict and hold to it. When you started celebrating Easter because it's spring and that's when Ostra's birthday and the rebirth of spring was celebrated people obviously had issues with that. When they looked at the way that people were bringing in some of the pagan rituals to the church they had strong issues with that.

And so there was a fundamentalist movement at that time that said okay here's what we can do. We can read a certain chapter in the Bible. We can dress a certain way. We can sing certain songs.

We can meet at certain times but we will not go beyond that. And so there is so much of the Christian heritage though that is tied to things that didn't celebrate the resurrection that did happen on Easter. That eventually even in the 1800's people went back and embraced them particularly in the United States and England where they had been ignored.

It's difficult to commercialize something that moves. But I still think it has more to do with the fact that whereas Christmas jumped outside the realm of being a religious holiday in many ways Christmas is a holiday that is religious for a certain select group but Christmas is also a holiday in non-Christian countries around the world. Japan, China and others that don't have a majority of Christmas of Christian populations. There was an opportunity in the commercialization of Christmas was much more successful. Therefore it became a universal holiday if you would. Much more like Thanksgiving. But Easter has retained its specific Christian roots and the purpose of Easter even with the addition of the Easter buddy and other things and making it somewhat childlike for children in certain ways the focus is still on the resurrection.

And I think that's what makes it unique. Eggs have been an important part of mystical elements of life forever. I mean the Egyptians would actually put eggs into sarcophagus and would put them into tombs.

Egg was seen as the beginning of life. And you've been listening to Ace Collins tell the story of Easter. And by the way you can get his book Stories Behind the Traditions and Songs of Easter by going to your local bookstore or hitting Amazon with the usual digital suspects.

And what an interesting story he's telling. That of the sort of pagan start to this, the secular start. Early missionaries using Ostra, this goddess that looked like a rabbit that symbolized the ending of winter and the beginning of spring. And the early missionaries using that as a selling opportunity, as a natural opportunity to get in there and evangelize. And then of course comes the religious divide. Some Protestants didn't like it. Catholics did. And ultimately even Protestants started to war over this.

And it wasn't until the 1840s or 50s that America itself settled in on this notion of Easter without battle lines being drawn amongst the various and multiple Christian religious denominations in this great country. When we come back, more of the story of Easter. A big story. A big American story. And a big international story here on Our American Stories. MSNBC Films presents a new six-part original series from NBC News Studios hosted by John Leguizamo. I wanted to do a show where people watch this and go, I want to be Latino. And you can't tell Latino stories without plenty of good food, music and dancing. So come on, let's go, let's go.

Leguizamo does America beginning Sunday, April 16th at 10 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC and streaming on Peacock. AT&T believes in the things that keep their value over time, like those expressionist paintings all our grandmas had in their living rooms. Those smooth soul vinyl records that let you hear music's purest form. That good cast iron skillet that holds the secret ingredient to all those passed down recipes. The quilt your aunt intricately made by hand.

A deadstock pair of sneakers. And at AT&T, even your old Samsung phone can have surprising value because the deal is back. Get a new Samsung Galaxy phone when you trade in your old one. There aren't a lot of things that hold their value over time, but AT&T values your Samsung. Ask how new and existing customers trade in a Galaxy phone any year, any condition, and get a free new Samsung Galaxy S23. Limited time requires trade in of Galaxy Note SZ series smartphone.

Terms and restrictions apply. See att.com for details. Chipotle's new Chicken Al Pastor is where fire meets flavor. Starting with chicken fresh off the grill, combined into a rich marinade of seared Merida peppers and ground achiote, balanced with a splash of pineapple for the right amount of heat, and finished with fresh lime and hand-cut cilantro. Chipotle's new Chicken Al Pastor is fire on every level. Only available for a limited time.

Order now in the app for pickup or delivery. Chipotle, for real. And we continue with our American stories and with Ace Collins telling the story of Easter.

Let's pick up where Ace last left off. The Egyptians actually believed that the world began when an egg was broken and the yellow part of the egg became the sun, the rest became the sustenance of the world. And so eggs have been important in every culture because eggs represent birth. And in that respect, there is very little that you can point to at Easter that probably better represents new birth. For Christians than an egg. Now, it was tied so much to fertility, gods and other things growing up, that Christians probably, you know, fought embracing the egg to begin with. But it was easy to take an egg, if you were a missionary, and use it as a track and say, OK, this represents Christ. This represents the new birth you can have in Christ.

This represents your life. You have been reborn. And we don't use the term reborn much anymore.

But it was a common term that was used back then. And so you can understand why they would want the egg to go that way. We talked earlier about Ostra, the god of fertility. Egg was her symbol as well. And the mere fact that Easter kind of got named after the celebration of Ostra and they changed. And as people became Christians, they celebrated Easter at about the same time as the celebration of Ostra was, the celebration of spring, the celebration of the rebirth of life. That's when eggs are laid. So, I mean, you also had the situation where the timing was perfect for eggs to be a part of the celebration.

The interesting thing about it is how well the early church did in giving meaning to that. They recognized a tradition that was a part of the Dark Ages because eggs were the sustenance of so many people. And they would go out and gather eggs. And it was a child's job to gather the eggs. They would gather the eggs in a bonnet they wore or something and bring them back.

And that was what the households would eat that day and cook with that day. And if a child, and by the way, they just weren't chicken eggs or pheasant eggs, any kind of eggs would do. And usually there was a tradition if a child brought back a really colorful egg, like a robin's egg, then they got a special prize. And at Easter they started, because it was in spring, they started gathering eggs after church services in meadows. Now they didn't hide eggs, eggs were just there. And so children would go out and find eggs. Eventually the priest, who looked at this old tradition that had nothing to do with Christianity, figured out, you know, we can take these eggs, we can color these eggs different colors.

Children can find them and they can bring them back and we can give them a prize for gathering the most eggs. But they also have to tell us what the various colors mean on the eggs. The color red meant the blood of Christ shed. The blue was for love. The yellow was for eternal life and the light that came into the world with Christ. And green also represented eternal life. You also had colors like purple that represented the royalty of Christ. So they would color eggs various colors and then the children would have to explain what those colors were. Now this was a time when people didn't read much, very few people could read.

Services were in languages they didn't understand, Latin most often. And so this was the foundation, if you will, for theological growth. And eventually they started, artists started coloring eggs with scenes from the Bible. Like a shepherd or a wise man or Jesus or an apostle or the parting of the Red Sea. And when a child found those eggs and they would see that image, they would have to come back and tell the people what that meant.

And they would actually have to act out a scene from the Bible. And therefore eggs became teaching tools. And so here was an ancient custom that had nothing to do with Christianity that was transformed into being a very important teaching tool or teaching aid, if you will, in the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages for the Christian church. And coloring Easter eggs therefore actually is a Christian tradition even though the egg itself was born outside of that. It morphed into having so many things spun off of it. One of the most interesting things is that they hid so many different eggs that you could no longer carry one enough in a bonnet.

You would break them or a hat if you were a young man. And so they developed baskets. They started weeding baskets. They had the one purpose of gathering eggs at Easter and they would be used each and every year. And those baskets initially looked like nests.

Eventually they put handles on them and people would carry the baskets. The children would carry the baskets and that way they could gather more eggs and have more fun. And that is still an important part of Easter today even though a lot of the eggs we find now that we hide are plastic eggs with things inside them.

Interesting point here. The rabbit, which has nothing to do with Easter, became an important Easter tradition because there were so many rabbits in Europe that children hunting for Easter eggs would scare rabbits when they would hunt for Easter eggs. And they would go to that spot and often find an egg that a member of the congregation had hid for them. And little children started telling other little children that it was the rabbits that laid the eggs. And therefore the Easter bunny came into fruition through just a rabbit being at the right place at the right time. And in Germany, some artisans who made candy started making chocolate Easter rabbits that were given as treats at Easter. And that opened up the door for the rabbit to play into Easter as well. Also, if you go back and look at it, Ostra had rabbit-like features and supposedly a bird that admired her so much and came to visit her was so transformed by her rabbit-like beauty that the bird asked to be transformed into a bunny. And that particular bunny, legend has it, could lay eggs as opposed to normal bunnies.

Could not. And whether that ties into how the bunny became a part of Easter, we don't know. But sometime books were written, Peter Cottontail became a monster hit several generations ago for little kids and then, doggone it, the man who gave us two of the great Christmas songs, Gene Autry, who gave us Rudolph and gave us Here Comes Santa Claus, in 1950 recorded a song about Here Comes Peter Cottontail that became a Megan selling record. And Gene, who gave us Rudolph, also gave us the bunny being fully associated with the Easter holidays. And you've been listening to Ace Collins tell the story of Easter and Ace also did this for us for the story of Christmas.

And you can go to Our American Stories and go on the search bar and type in his name, Ace Collins. He does this as well as anybody out there writing about the things we think we know and do know but don't know the full story behind how they came to be. My goodness, I'm learning just about the tradition of eggs. And in the Middle Ages, why we got the colors and the coloring of eggs that we do, well, without thinking about it now. Moreover, the painting of eggs.

What an interesting idea. And all of it to teach what were essentially mostly illiterate masses who didn't understand the church teachings that were mostly in Latin at the time. And thus the beginning of a tradition that we all love, so many Americans love and practice today. And when we come back, more of the remarkable storytelling of Ace Collins.

His book, Stories Behind the Traditions and Songs of Easter, is available in bookstores or anywhere else you get books. Again, when we return, more of the story of Easter here on Our American Stories. MSNBC Films presents a new six-part original series from NBC News Studios hosted by John Leguizamo. I wanted to do a show where people watch this and go, I want to be Latino. And you can't tell Latino stories without plenty of good food, music and dancing. So come on, let's go, let's go.

Like Leguizamo Does America beginning Sunday, April 16th at 10 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC and streaming on Peacock. AT&T believes in the things that keep their value over time. Like those expressionist paintings all our grandmas had in their living rooms. Those smooth soul vinyl records that let you hear music's purest form. That good cast iron skillet that holds the secret ingredient to all those passed down recipes. The quilt your aunt intricately made by hand.

A dead stock pair of sneakers. And at AT&T, even your old Samsung phone can have surprising value because the deal is back. Get a new Samsung Galaxy phone when you trade in your old one. There aren't a lot of things that hold their value over time, but AT&T values your Samsung. Ask how new and existing customers trade in a Galaxy phone any year, any condition and get a free new Samsung Galaxy S23. Limited time requires trade in of Galaxy Note SZ series smartphone. Terms and restrictions apply.

See att.com for details. Chipotle's new chicken al pastor is where fire meets flavor. Starting with chicken fresh off the grill. Combined into a rich marinade of seared Merida peppers and ground achiote.

Balanced with a splash of pineapple for the right amount of heat and finished with fresh lime and hand cut cilantro. Chipotle's new chicken al pastor is fire on every level. Only available for a limited time.

Order now in the app for pickup or delivery. Chipotle, for real. And we're back with our American stories. And the story of Easter is told by Ace Collins.

Let's pick up again where we last left off. By the way, I will tell you this, in the 1840s, 50s and 60s, people were already dressing up like bunnies to sell stuff in stores. So it is a tradition in the United States that goes back at least that far. And there was a bunny in the 1860s that the Easter egg rolls at the White House with Abraham Lincoln when he began the Easter egg hunts at the White House. There was a bunny there that was helping the kids find those eggs at those first Easter hunts on the White House lawn. When you look at the American traditions, the Easter bunny has become so important, and it's that way in England as well, the UK, that about 90% of people who celebrate Easter have an Easter bunny as a part of their celebration. Even if they're Christians, they still use the Easter bunny to bring a little bit of the childlike feeling and lore to it.

You could actually trace Santa Claus' roots to Saint Nicholas of Baria and another great Christian man from Latvia who we know as King Wenceslas today. There is no such way you can trace the Easter bunny's roots that way. And the Easter bunny, you can't tie into any way or shape the resurrection or any type of Christian value. But the Easter bunny is a kind of a unique childlike symbol of Easter that I think makes the holiday a bit less serious than it is otherwise. And if you think about that, that may be good because when you talk about the crucifixion and the horrible crucifixion of an innocent man, that is unsettling.

Resurrection brings hope, but still you have that unsettling element hanging over it. And therefore, in that way, Easter is a very adult holiday. It's not the birth of a baby, it's the crucifixion and the resurrection. And I think by having elements like Easter egg hunts and an Easter bunny, you at least bring something that might offer some comfort, some joy, and maybe tamper down a little bit of the horrific nature of the crucifixion.

And I don't mean that in a negative sense because I think the crucifixion is very, very important. But I do think that having a bit of this holiday with some childlike references probably helps open the door to talking about the real Easter when children get old enough to fully understand it better because they already have something of an Easter tradition and now you can sit there and say, okay, here's what the color of the eggs mean, here is what really happened, here is what life has promised to you. This egg can represent new life, the new life you have when you fully understand who Christ is. Back in the 15th, 16th, and 1700s, the Easter egg tree was an important part of the celebration of Easter. And they would actually drain, they would poke a hole in eggs, drain everything out, paint them various colors, and hang them on trees.

And once again, they would talk about the various colors and what they meant with their children. And the Easter eggs were the ornaments, if you will. And there are still, I still know a few people who have an Easter tree.

It is not a very common celebration, but it is something that has happened. But once again, I think the reason we don't do that to as great a extent as they did all of those years ago is the lack of commercialization of this holiday. I think stores realized you probably couldn't sell enough Easter decorations to hang on trees to make it worthwhile, as opposed to Christmas where you have all these themed trees and everything else going on. I still think the lack of commercialization is due strictly to the point of you can't take the spiritual nature of Easter away. Ultimately, at the heart is the resurrection of Christ after the crucifixion.

And therefore, it's hopelessness to hope, you know, and it's darkness to light. And I think those things are so profound that the traditions that we have with it, while good, pale in comparison to what the real meaning of the holiday is. You know, you can argue that the beginning of life is very important, and it is, and that's why we celebrate Christ's birth. And that's why Christmas became this international holiday, even though it was commercialized into being a non-religious holiday for many. But Easter was the end and then the new beginning. And I don't find many ways that you can fully commercialize that. You have to actually internalize that into something that was spiritual.

And I think that's very important. Now, that doesn't mean that Christians haven't used Easter in ways that were less than spiritual. Throughout the 1800s, early 1900s in New York City, there were people who walked up and down Broadway after church services on Easter Sunday. And they walked up and down Broadway for one and one reason. That was to show off their new clothes, and they were trying to outdo everybody else.

So there were elements that had nothing to do with how we should respond to each other. They wanted to be judged on how good they looked that day. And so you wanted to have the most colorful bonnet, and you wanted to have the nicest new suit.

You wanted your kids to look better than the other kids. And that was essentially the advent of the Easter parades in the United States. Now, in Europe, Easter parades dated back to the Middle Ages, and those parades were the stations of the cross where people would go and actually retrace what happened the last week of Christ's life. From Palm Sunday to the finals, the Last Supper, to betrayal, to crucifixions, every place you stopped on that parade portrayed that differently.

Many people call it the walk to Emmaus now. But that was a part of the early Christmas parades. In America, we never really had that as a part of our Easter celebration, but we did have parades where we tried to show off how good we looked. And so when you think about the great movie, the Easter parade movie with Judy Garland, it was based on that walking up and down the streets of New York, showing off how good you looked when you just went to church. So one, it was advertising, hey, I went to church on Easter.

And two, it was advertising, look how good I looked going to church on Easter. So that's a unique tradition that probably has even less connection with the Bible than the Easter bunny does. When you look at Easter, you're looking at a holiday once again that's deeply spiritual. And I think the important thing that we all need to remember is that whether you call it Easter or Resurrection Sunday, it is a time of reflection, a time of hope.

And I think it's a time that we need to realize that the people who knew Jesus spent three days scared to death and hiding until they saw him resurrected. And when they saw the resurrected Christ, it gave them the faith, so much faith, that they lived the rest of their lives spreading that message. And except for one of those 11 who did not betray him, you know, Judas betrayed him, the other 11 didn't, they were persecuted. They lost their lives for that faith.

I think John was the only one who managed to live a full life. And I don't think, and I tell kids this all the time, I don't think these people would have died for a lie. They saw Christ, they saw the resurrected Christ, and they died telling that message.

And I think if there's a message that we need to latch onto at Easter about the Resurrection is these people saw it, and they were willing to live for it, and they were willing to die for it. And a terrific job on the production by Greg Hengler. And a special thanks once again to Ace Collins, his book, Stories Behind the Traditions and Songs of Easter.

It's a must get. Read it with your family, share it with your family. And by the way, his hour on Christmas is just as good.

And you can go to our americanstories.com and you can plug in Ace Collins's name on the search bar, and you'll be able to listen to that with you and your family as well. And it's so true, as Ace said, Easter is a time of reflection and hope. And it was fascinating listening to him describe why Easter and the Easter eggs and the bunnies and all of those traditions are so important.

And it's essentially true. This is a very difficult celebration time, and the crucifixion is rough. Kids are ready when they're ready for such things, and families know this.

And it's why we use the bunnies and why we use the eggs. Three-year-olds aren't ready for the full story of the crucifixion. It's a rough story, but it's a great introduction. It's a great way to ease families in to the story of what happened on the day of the crucifixion and three days later, the resurrection. A terrific job, as always, by Ace telling these stories, these sacred stories, and also these secular stories. There are many people in this country who managed to somehow celebrate Easter and are not Christian.

The story of Easter here on Our American Story. I'm Malcolm Graber. I live way out in the country. I drive everywhere.

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