Easter {Five on Friday}

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Easter {Five on Friday}

It's Good Friday. I've never quite understood why we call it Good Friday. But more on that later.

1. The Easter Bunny.

Though the Easter Bunny tradition as we know it today was started by Lutheran Germans, the beginnings of rabbits being connected to the church is a little different. Did you know that in Medieval times rabbits were thought to be hermaphrodites? This led to them being associated with Jesus' mother, Mary because they, too, could become pregnant without losing their virginity.

Crazy stuff.

2. Good Friday.

It has always struck me as odd that we refer to the day of Jesus' death as "Good Friday." Like the Easter Bunny, the origins of the term Good Friday were not quite what I expected, but make perfect sense. Based on the Gospel of John, biblical scholars believe that Jesus' death occurred on the day before the Jewish Sabbath. What we know as Friday. And no one knows for sure why we use the word good, but some claim that it refers to the archaic definition of good. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this is: "of a day or season observed as holy by the church."

3. My church.