Easter is a season of 50 days. We are very good at Lent being 40 days (or so); we are less good at Easter being 50 days. Penance. Reflecting. Those, we can manage for a season. Celebrating. Partying for a season. Not so much.
Even Facebook has reduced the possible length of an “event” – I used to run a 50-days-of-Easter Facebook event, but, in this shortening-attention-span culture, Facebook does not allow for an event longer than 2 weeks!
Ask someone, “What is the Sunday after Easter?” and they might say the Second Sunday of Easter, Low Sunday; Station at St. Pancras; Thomas Sunday, Dominica in Albis [Depositis/Deponendis], Quasimodo, Divine Mercy, or the Octave Day of Easter. But those are titles for the Sunday after Easter Day.
The Sunday after Easter is… [OK – you read the answer above].
Great Christian festivals begin in the evening after sunset, are celebrated through the day, and on into the next evening. But Easter begins in the evening with the Easter Vigil and is celebrated for fifty days as one long festival.
Easter is a seventh of the year, the Great Sunday of the year. The 50 days of the Early Church was set into church rule by the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. Alleluias fill these 50 days (having fasted from Alleluia for the 40 days of Lent). The Easter (Paschal) Candle is lit throughout these fifty days.
As a culture, we are not good at celebrating for fifty days in a row:
how to celebrate 50 days of Easter?
Easter Season
Easter Season Reflection
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