125. What's the Deal with the Easter Bunny? The History of Easter

Dyed eggs, pastel colors, and of course the Easter Bunny, a Claus-esque creature of the night that brings good tidings to pious children. 

When you take a step back it really does feel a little strange when we consider the ways that we celebrate Easter these days. Do you ever wonder how we got here?

Wonder no more, dear chump listener. 

Join us as we explore the history of Easter, from the early days of squabbling over when to celebrate it, to the advent of hard-boiled eggs and wearing pink and yellow polo shirts. 

And also, we've got new perks! Fun perks! Cool perks! Support us today! Or tomorrow is fine, too. 

Transcript

Jim Salmon (00:00.738)
Hey everybody, welcome to Church History for Chumps. My name is John Simon and I'm here with the most venerable Taylor Treadway.

GOBBA GOOL (00:07.456)
And I'm here with the even more venerable John Simon.

Jim Salmon (00:12.081)
that's nice, man. And hey, this episode is sponsored by, you want to introduce the sponsor, bro?

GOBBA GOOL (00:13.634)
Hey, ssss ssss

GOBBA GOOL (00:20.302)
Well, yeah, because I'm just saying, you know, I travel a lot for school and work. I'm just always on an airplane. Well, I'm heading to Ohio, specifically a little place called Chillicothe, Ohio. Yeah, and 45 miles south of it. And I need I need some new clothes. I'm bald, so I'm going to need some beard trimming.

Jim Salmon (00:23.808)
all the time, constantly trapped.

Mm-hmm.

Jim Salmon (00:33.981)
yeah, that's 45 miles south of Columbus, correct?

Jim Salmon (00:43.522)
Yeah? Yup. Plugs? yeah.

GOBBA GOOL (00:49.77)
and I'd like to get a new tattoo. Do you know where I could go for all three of those things?

Jim Salmon (00:56.312)
Dude, you're gonna think I'm crazy, but you need to go to the Captivating Collective in Chillicothe. It's actually the sponsor of this episode. And it's where hair, tattoo, and fashion converge into one rad place. It's literally got like a 4.7 on Yelp. It's amazing. And I heard that the owner has incredible taste in podcasts. Man, what a blessing. Yeah, dude.

GOBBA GOOL (01:00.693)
I already do.

GOBBA GOOL (01:16.45)
That's awesome.

GOBBA GOOL (01:21.036)
I've heard that too.

Jim Salmon (01:25.058)
Tell me how you like it, I'm sure you're gonna love it.

GOBBA GOOL (01:27.458)
will. So shout out. Thank you for the sponsorship. So we actually have a few shout outs.

Jim Salmon (01:31.028)
Yeah, thank you.

We do, yeah. So we've got a whole new perk system. We just started for buy me a coffee. We're going to explain that in a second, but we have shout out some of our supporters. Of course, Serena, thank you so much. Thank you for being our first honorary sponsorship. That was a lot of fun. We'll do that for lots of things. Thank you. Our good friend, Brian, as always, you guys, you've been, you've been such a, such an awesome supporter and Thomas, know you're not listening to this, but Brian wishes you all love also. I wish I could text him, but I can't. So he has to find out through listening.

GOBBA GOOL (01:49.08)
Yeah.

Jim Salmon (02:05.261)
Also our good buddy Isaac Isaac. Thank you for I could tell you've been really digging the show lately and we appreciate that and he's actually got a he's gonna be picking the next chump talk episode, which is really exciting. So I'm stoked for that

GOBBA GOOL (02:17.654)
So I, John and I haven't talked about this. So I'm, we're just, this is live. That's going to fill up really quick, I think. And that price is going to have to listen. All I'm saying listeners is if you want to pick a chump talk topic, you better probably get in line. And, cause that price is probably going to have to go up real soon.

Jim Salmon (02:21.587)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, we're improvising.

We'll see, we'll see, you know?

Jim Salmon (02:35.81)
Yeah.

Jim Salmon (02:40.417)
And then of course we have to shout out Mr. and Mrs. Treadway and of course the dogs Gus and Dory. So thank you guys for supporting. I believe it. I believe it. Those are good names. Those are not names I would associate with an ugly dog. So that's good. Yeah, so we've got this new perk system. We'll explain it real quick and then we'll kind of get to business as usual for the show. So essentially, and again, all these are one-time gifts because you know how we feel about subscriptions. I think it's actually a...

GOBBA GOOL (02:47.66)
Shout out Gus and Dory. They're real cute. They're cute.

GOBBA GOOL (02:55.596)
That's right. That's right.

Jim Salmon (03:09.581)
not my favorite, you people forget about subscriptions and before you know it, you've earned $2,000 from a poor grandma who doesn't know how subscriptions work. So if you give us anywhere from five to 19 bucks, you get a shout out, you get a haiku, all the classic stuff. If you give us a 20 to $35 one-time gift, you get to sponsor an episode, which means that we will introduce our episode by saying this episode is sponsored by, and you fill in the blank, we'll shout out your church, your dog, your girlfriend, we'll propose to your girlfriend for you.

How awesome would that be? I've heard they do that sometimes. We'll shout out your business, just whatever. Just don't make it weird and we'll maybe have to talk about it. And for a 50 time or above gift, you get to become an executive producer for a Chump Talk episode. That means that you get to work with us on actually picking an episode of Chump Talk for us to talk about. We've already got the one for April in the books, you guys. They're filling up fast. And Taylor's right. We probably, we probably...

GOBBA GOOL (04:07.874)
We'll see. mean, like, I think after like four or five months get planned out, it's just going to be like, well.

Jim Salmon (04:08.174)
put that at too low.

Jim Salmon (04:14.114)
Yeah, maybe we just have to do chunk chump talk more often, which I mean if they're paying for themselves, that wouldn't be so bad, honestly. So we'll see. We'll see. Anyways, enough of that shop talk boring perks, whatever. Yeah, always. Thank you guys for the support. We really love you guys. And also thank you to Enoch who gave us this great idea in the comments for the last episode because you know, you can take a man to fish, but if you don't teach them how to fish.

GOBBA GOOL (04:24.802)
Well, yes. Thank you for the support.

Jim Salmon (04:42.818)
And he taught us how to fish, which I really appreciate. He didn't give us a fish, but he gave us a fishing rod. You feel me, Taylor? I, was that a Baptist enough thing? F, fish, freedom.

GOBBA GOOL (04:52.344)
I don't think it was Baptist. Yeah, there you go. Now it's Baptist. Yeah. Well, yes, and thank you guys for being kind to my friend Tyler. So that was great. probably have him back. Apparently, John's just been deeply reflecting on Baptist origins all week.

Jim Salmon (04:57.752)
finesse. All right, that's enough. That's enough.

Jim Salmon (05:07.266)
Yeah, that was a fun episode.

Jim Salmon (05:14.58)
I'm just chewing on it man, you never know. I mean, I don't know what my future will look like in terms of baptistry. We're just leaving that up to the Lord. So, I don't know. But I don't think I'll ever be, you know, I don't know. I'll never get to go to a Coptic Orthodox Church and convert myself there. I don't think that's ever gonna be in the stars for me. That's right. Yeah, not on Earth though.

GOBBA GOOL (05:37.07)
Alright, we'll see him in heaven. So today is Easter, so you guys are hearing this two days after Easter. So what'd do for Easter, John?

Jim Salmon (05:46.062)
Right.

Jim Salmon (05:49.519)
I went to church. Yeah, I to church, hung out with my family, hung out with my wife's family, took a nap, chilled. Yeah, nothing really. Yeah, dude, was pretty, I mean, church was early. I mean, well, I'm not working at church, so you've got all kinds of stuff to do. What did you have to do?

GOBBA GOOL (06:02.69)
You did all of that?

GOBBA GOOL (06:12.096)
I mean, I got there early and had band practice and then we had, you know, pre worship time and then we had worship service and then we had post worship time. It's just more coffee and donuts. Yeah, well, then we had Bible study and then I got in a car and we drove to go be with Brandy's family and celebrate Easter and.

Jim Salmon (06:23.726)
What does post-worship tell

that's kinda nice. Okay. Yeah.

Jim Salmon (06:36.334)
Mm-hmm.

GOBBA GOOL (06:41.698)
That was fun. House full of little children's, all the different little cousins running around. So it was a.

Jim Salmon (06:46.606)
Nice, yeah. I think I am starting to really grow in a pre, I'll say this, all the people who clicked on our episode already know what we're gonna be talking about, but I think the research that we did, I did for this episode, I hope the same is true for your end of research too. It actually made me really appreciate Easter. I think Easter is one of those days where I can just be like, yeah, whatever, every year, big deal. But I think today I was like, nah, this is pretty sweet. This is actually awesome.

GOBBA GOOL (07:14.636)
My... Dude, I... You told me to research the Easter Bunny.

Jim Salmon (07:20.556)
Yeah, okay, it was

GOBBA GOOL (07:22.19)
You had this like deep liturgical homework where you're like you're like you're like having you're like literally having like time with Jesus during your podcast research and I'm just like pouring over like this stupid Latin Yeah, have a stupid Latin pamphlet that I found that's just like some guy from 17th century talking about how eating too much eggs kills you and then there was an Easter bunny reference

Jim Salmon (07:35.202)
Here comes Peter Cottontail.

GOBBA GOOL (07:51.725)
Yeah, mine did not lead to some sort of reverent appreciation for a liturgical holiday.

Jim Salmon (07:51.925)
I can't wait. It didn't create this spirit of worship for you. I'm really sorry about that.

GOBBA GOOL (08:01.655)
No, I'm so surprised like I was like do I play a longer to just call him out for what he just said Yeah

Jim Salmon (08:08.278)
No, that's fine, that's fine. I mean, to be fair, you put my half on me because you didn't want to get into all the calendar stuff. Which, to be fair, let's do it. Let's do it.

GOBBA GOOL (08:16.12)
That's true. Let's just jump in. So essentially what happened was, welcome to all the people that skipped the banter. Welcome. So what had happened was, we're talking about, OK, what can we do during our break? We're kind of enjoying a break from the Crusades. It's a less genocide and jihad. Anyway.

Jim Salmon (08:24.246)
Welcome.

Jim Salmon (08:31.956)
Mm-hmm a little bit. Yeah

GOBBA GOOL (08:39.094)
I was like, well, you know, we had fun doing kind of that history of Christmas episode. I was like, what if we did like a history of Easter? But then we remembered, like we have read, there is a, it's very complicated, the Easter calendar. And I actually looked, I told John, because I'm like neck deep in homework and work right now, I was like, I don't have time and or the brain computation power to wrap my mind around.

Jim Salmon (08:46.583)
Mm-hmm.

Jim Salmon (08:55.555)
Yes.

GOBBA GOOL (09:09.068)
what John's about to walk us through. So I'm impressed if he can land this plane.

Jim Salmon (09:16.674)
I'm gonna try dude and try not to crash into the side of the mountain top here, but

GOBBA GOOL (09:21.162)
Yeah, so you'll have the nice one and then and then in the second half I've got a handful of little fun little history of you know some random little Easter stuff. Little, yeah I have little Easter eggs that's right.

Jim Salmon (09:32.076)
Yeah, little Easter eggs, if you will, right?

man. Yeah. So, I'm going to kind of cover. So I think as I was doing this, one of the questions that I kind of wanted to answer, and this is really for all you calendar heads out there is, what is the deal with the relationship between Easter and Passover and why are Western churches always celebrating Easter on different days than the Eastern church? And I can

GOBBA GOOL (10:05.604)
and it spans like a massive gap, right? Like sometimes Easter's in March and sometimes it's in like late April.

Jim Salmon (10:12.524)
Yeah, like it's, usually a couple of weeks. It's not super long, but yeah, there's some, I was like, yeah, mean, massive. don't know. I'm sorry. sorry. I'm not good at that. but yeah, so, so really, yeah. So where we're going to start is the question of, how does Easter start as a celebration in the church? And, and yeah, it's, it's kind of an interesting thing. So.

GOBBA GOOL (10:15.916)
No, I don't know. Sam, I don't know.

GOBBA GOOL (10:21.784)
Just tell me when I'm wrong. Just tell me when I'm...

Jim Salmon (10:40.85)
Not a lot of the early, early church fathers talked a ton about Easter in the beginning. So really the best way to start talking about Easter is actually to start talking about the Lord's Day, because that is the original like OG, not just holiday, holy day that Christians across the board were referring to and we're living by. It was every Sunday.

It was a time and an event of gathering, of worshipping, of practicing the sacraments or ordinances for the Baptists out there.

GOBBA GOOL (11:16.878)
They did not have that word back then. It's OK.

Jim Salmon (11:21.614)
I'm just trying to be ecumenical. But yeah, so way back, mean, like literally we can go back to the Diddeke, which is an episode that we did a while ago. You can definitely go back and find that one. the Diddeke, don't say they won't listen to it. They won't listen to it. But...

GOBBA GOOL (11:24.728)
I appreciate it.

GOBBA GOOL (11:37.108)
I wasn't on it. It's not very good.

Jim Salmon (11:44.461)
That was one of the oldest, oldest texts from church history that kind of just shares some basic principles about Christianity. And it talks about the Lord's Day. And there's a quote from it that I'll read that says, every Lord's Day gather yourselves together and break bread and give thanksgiving after having confessed your transgressions that your sacrifice may be pure. So we already get a sense that like from the very beginning, Christians had a very routine habit.

of gathering, of breaking bread, we assume is either the love feast or communion, giving thanks and having confess, so it's confession, there's prayer, and then of course there's the practicing of the Eucharist. these things that, and I can almost guarantee that the majority of churches of every person listening to this show, if you're a person who goes to church, will probably have most of these elements when it comes to gathering, praying, confessing.

know, maybe you do the Eucharist weekly, maybe not so much. So later on in the first century, churches will start operating by a loose schedule of kind of recurring things that will gradually kind of evolve into what's called the church calendar. And for those who, you know, are from more liturgical kind of high church traditions, this is where the feast days are going to kick in. This is when the more like strict fast times are coming in. If you're a Baptist like me,

Don't worry, they're not real. It's okay. They were never real. According to church historian, Justo Gonzalez, he says, quote, every Sunday was a sort of Easter and a day of joy. And every Friday was a day of penance, fasting and sorrow. Rather early for reasons that are not altogether clear. Wednesday also became a day of fasting. There was also a very special Sunday once a year.

GOBBA GOOL (13:15.63)
It's not real.

Jim Salmon (13:42.499)
the day of resurrection, the greatest of Christian celebrations, which of course would become Easter. And so we don't exactly know when Christians started celebrating Easter. I would argue it was probably pretty darn close. And I think the best reason for that is because Christians inherited a lot of customs from the Jews and through not just the Old Testament practice of Passover,

but from the New Testament texts about Passover, we knew that Passover had this fulfilled kind of typological significance in Christ. So I think it would actually be more difficult to argue that Christians, especially that were largely Jewish in their earliest iterations, didn't continue Passover in some regard that would turn into Easter. It was basically the celebration of

Yeah, all the lords stay.

GOBBA GOOL (14:40.236)
mean, and remember the early Christians knew where the tomb was. And that's why to this day, like we have the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. So they knew and there's record of them gathering there. So I don't know. I mean, we were just talking in Sunday school today about how Sabbath is on a Saturday. And so like Christians literally moved the day of worship.

Jim Salmon (14:47.979)
Exactly.

Jim Salmon (14:53.294)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jim Salmon (15:02.818)
Mm-hmm.

Jim Salmon (15:07.694)
Right, because of the day of the resurrection, which is so cool because that shows that in belief and in practice, the resurrection has always been the center of Christian worship, like across the board, across all traditions. That's such a big deal. Unless you're a Seventh-day Adventist, which... What's the deal, guys? Welcome! Thanks for listening! So another cool thing about Easter was that Easter was actually a pretty sweet day because

GOBBA GOOL (15:09.888)
Yes.

GOBBA GOOL (15:26.678)
Welcome.

Jim Salmon (15:36.815)
For a lot of the early churches, Easter was the day that would host all the baptisms. And so when new believers would come around, they would usually save like all of them. So they do these like mass baptisms on the Sunday of Easter to kind of like, you know, kind of build up the celebration. I've got this quote from Church Father Justin Martyr where he says,

GOBBA GOOL (15:45.22)
that's right.

Jim Salmon (16:03.822)
Once those who have believed have been washed and joined us, we take them to where those who are called brothers and sisters are gathered, in order to offer fervent prayers for ourselves, for the recently illumined, and for all others all over the world. Then there is the kiss of peace, the president, the presiding one, is given bread and cup of wine and water, and the Eucharist is celebrated.

So back to our guy Gonzalez, he believes that this is a big reason for the establishment of Lent because since Easter was such an important day, since it was not just this day of mass baptisms, but it was obviously the celebration of the Eucharist, this moment of like prayer and intercession, the kind of logic was, well, if this day is going to be so important, then we need to...

spend some time praying and fasting in preparation for this day. So that's kind of where Lent came from.

GOBBA GOOL (16:57.964)
You know, one of the biggest takeaways from that Justin Martyr quote is how does he refer to the church, to where the brothers and sisters are gathered? And I'm just like, so up until right now, if I saw on like a church's like, what was was the little bulletin or something or on the website, if they call their service, the gathering, my eyes roll like so far back into my head. And now I'm like, wait a second.

Jim Salmon (17:07.284)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jim Salmon (17:16.248)
Yeah.

Jim Salmon (17:24.65)
hold on yeah I know yeah it's like it's a callback

GOBBA GOOL (17:25.868)
That's like so early church. no, and then here I am thinking judging them for being hipster. man. true, thank you. Thank you for the lifeline. Yeah.

Jim Salmon (17:32.783)
Both things can be true though, unfortunately. So yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, to make you feel a little better. yeah, so also, so Easter becomes this day of the remembrance of Christ's crucifixion. Cause of course in the scriptures, we believe that Jesus was crucified during Passover. That's the whole thing about the last supper and all that. We also, so yeah, we Christians believe that is as a con...

Easter is a continuation of the Passover event, which means that it kind of holds all of this deep and I guess more traditions celebrate this than others. But for mine, it's like there's really this deep realization of like Passover is the celebration of God delivering his people from the oppression of slavery. And now we have this even greater Passover experience where like Christ became the sacrificial lamb.

so that he would pass over wrath for all of his people and you know begin ushering us into the promised land it's like a really really sick thing so easter big deal people loved it awesome what what it was sick i don't know is yeah it was majestic magnificent sorry my speech not reverent enough for for the

GOBBA GOOL (18:44.75)
Don't drop some beautiful typology and then be like, that was sick. It was beautiful or something, I don't know.

GOBBA GOOL (18:59.02)
Wimps are cool.

Jim Salmon (19:01.816)
high reverend over here.

GOBBA GOOL (19:02.947)
I know where the guy covered in tattoos

Jim Salmon (19:06.295)
You're like, show some respect.

sipping your freaking Coke Zero over there. All right, all right. So one of the first major issues that came around the celebration of Easter and the reason why most podcasts aren't doing an episode on this came from the question of when Easter should be celebrated. And so...

Yeah, it gets a little sticky. I'm gonna do my best to explain it, but honestly, if I had to answer this on an essay question for an exam, I'd probably get like an 85. It's hard to explain.

GOBBA GOOL (19:41.089)
You're cooked.

Honestly dude, I'll take a B over my fail, so I'm gonna copy your homework.

Jim Salmon (19:46.831)
That's fair. Perfect. All right, let's do it. So essentially what it is is there are two camps about when Easter should be celebrated. There are those that say Easter is an important day of worship and the day that we worship is the Lord's Day, which is Sunday. So it should always be on Sunday. And then there are those that say Easter

has to be connected with Passover because it's the fulfillment of Passover. So it should consistently be on the first day of Passover, which is the 14th of Nissan. So what you're going to have is the people who prefer a more traditional approach to celebrating Easter and then a group that we call the Corto Decimans, which literally just means the 14ers because they believe it should be practiced on the 14th of Nissan.

Now, both are gonna offer some logistical issues and they're also gonna drum up not just logistical issues but like some kind of cultural ones and who we do or do not want to like rub shoulders with so, so bear with me. So...

GOBBA GOOL (21:02.764)
What this was during like Constantine era when they were. this is way before. OK.

Jim Salmon (21:08.096)
No, dude, this is second century. It's going to come back, but it's so there's there's essentially going to be a squabble and then a ceasefire and then Constantine through Nicaea is going to kind of just resolve it once and for all. So here's essentially what it is. The problem with celebrating it consistently on the 14th of Nissan is twofold. The first problem is that

The Jews don't use the same calendar as the rest of the of the Christians of really the whole Roman empirical world. The Roman world at this time uses the Julian calendar, which is very similar to the one that we use now, but there's a couple of differences, but it's 365 days leap year every four years, obviously based on solar, not lunar. The Jews are using a lunar solar calendar, which tracks

both the movement of the sun and the phases of the moon. So the problem is that if you're gonna celebrate Easter on the 14th of Nisan every year, one problem is it's gonna be a completely different day every year, which is just kind of awkward to try to have to plan around. The second problem is that the way that the Jews did it was they had like professional religious lunar observers.

who would watch and record the different cycles of the moon. Cause remember this is pretty scientifically primitive back in this is 1800 years ago or so. So they would have observers of the lunar cycles who would then kind of discuss and dialogue with the rabbis and basically have to decide when each day was going to be. And so the church was like, for one,

It doesn't make sense that we're not celebrating Easter on a Sunday. That's literally when we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus every other day. But two, we don't want to be dependent on like having to interact with the rabbis and find out what day is the right day. Cause that seems like we're still kind of relying on Jewish collaboration and that's kind of awkward. So, yeah, it gets, it gets kind of complicated. So.

Jim Salmon (23:24.056)
Basically, all of the Christians knew that Easter had a dependence on Passover because Jesus was crucified during Passover, but you're going to have different people kind of just coming to different sides on this. And also the quarto decimans can be looked at as a heresy. So there's two things about that too. One, we don't actually know which view was the historical view because

There's not enough historical evidence to say which one the church was actually doing until this conflict happened. We don't know if the OG church was doing it one way or another. We're not actually sure. The second is that there's like solid dudes on both sides, specifically like Polycarp. So I think this is what complicates it the most. Polycarp, who was Bishop of Smyrna, he's, you know, of course an OG of the early church.

GOBBA GOOL (24:03.544)
Mm-hmm.

Jim Salmon (24:17.994)
one of the most significant martyrdom stories that you'll ever read early church or church history anywhere. And he is a court jodesimen and he believes that this should be practiced. And one of the tricky things is his argument when he comes to visit Rome and speaks with the Roman Pope at the time and says, and they're like, wait, hold on, you're doing Easter how over there? And he's like, well, yeah, this is how I do it. And they're like, we actually think it should be this way.

GOBBA GOOL (24:28.394)
No.

Jim Salmon (24:47.566)
Polycarp's argument is essentially, oh well that's interesting because the guy that discipled me actually told me that I should do it this way. What was his name again? Oh, the Apostle John. So it gets complicated, right? Which again makes sense because the Apostle John, being a disciple of Jesus, was a practicing Jew. I mean, obviously a Christian and an apostle, but he had probably learned Passover and didn't have that same type of

GOBBA GOOL (24:59.597)
Jim Salmon (25:17.606)
obstinance towards rubbing shoulders with the Jews as maybe someone in Rome would. So it basically became this issue of like the Romans really wanted to celebrate it on a Sunday and then the Eastern Church like Asia Minor, Jerusalem, other areas were like no we actually want to stick to it on this on this day.

GOBBA GOOL (25:35.842)
The one that's more Jewish. So the church that's more Jewish wants to do it the more Jewish way. Yeah, who hates the Jews?

Jim Salmon (25:38.498)
Mm-hmm.

Jim Salmon (25:43.031)
Exactly. And the Roman church is less interested, right? Who is more centralized and closer to Roman culture. So I have this quote to read from our boy, the goat of primary sources, our good friend Eusebius. This is from book five of his church history kind of chronicles. And I love this quote because it resolves really well, but also

GOBBA GOOL (25:52.558)
Yeah.

Jim Salmon (26:12.354)
This should be a very clear indicator that it's kind of a miracle that it took a thousand years for the East and Western churches to split up because, well, I'll just read it here. So, Izzius Sebius, he says, thereupon Victor, this is the Pope at the time, thereupon Victor, who presided over the church at Rome, immediately attempted to cut off from the common unity the parishes of all Asia with the churches that agreed with them as heterodox.

GOBBA GOOL (26:21.752)
Yeah

Jim Salmon (26:40.204)
and he wrote letters and declared all the brethren there holy excommunicate. But this did not please all the bishops, and they besought him to consider the things of peace and of neighborly unity and love. Words of theirs are extant, sharply rebuking Victor. Among them was Irenaeus, who, sending letters in the name of the brethren in Gaul over whom he presided, maintained that the mystery of the resurrection of the Lord should only be observed on the Lord's day. He fittingly admonishes

Victor that he should not cut off the whole churches of God which observe the tradition of an ancient custom and after many other words he proceeds as follows. This is Eusebius quoting Irenaeus. For the controversy is not only concerning the day, but also concerning the very manner of the fast. For some think that they should fast one day, others two, yet others more. Some moreover count their day as consisting of 40 hours day and night.

And this variety and its observance has not originated in our time, but long before in that of our ancestors. It is likely that they did not hold to strict accuracy and thus formed a custom for their posterity according to their own simplicity and peculiar mode. Yet all of these lived nonetheless in peace and we also live in peace with one another. And the disagreement in regards to the fast confirms the agreement in the faith. So Victor's basically like,

These guys want to be stubborn. If they're not willing to celebrate Easter at the correct time, we're going to just cut them off. And fortunately, praise God, a number of bishops in the West, including Irenaeus, were like, that's a terrible idea. And Irenaeus is basically like, they're following the customs they were taught. Like, it's not right.

GOBBA GOOL (28:14.814)
Wow.

GOBBA GOOL (28:25.237)
man.

GOBBA GOOL (28:30.36)
Dude, this guy's not even really a pope yet. Like, pope doesn't come around till early fifth century. This guy sucks.

Jim Salmon (28:34.478)
Right, right.

Yeah, this is before Pope really carries weights. Yeah, this dude is easily a top five lousy pope immediately.

GOBBA GOOL (28:48.376)
Dude, you know, it makes you appreciate, like, I think we all get bogged down at, the ecclesiastical division of today. And then you, like, read a story like that, and you're like, OK, maybe it's not as bad as it could be.

Jim Salmon (28:56.494)
Mm-hmm.

Jim Salmon (29:00.696)
That's what I'm saying, dude. Like, they were literally willing to split immediately at something so obscure as to like, not if they celebrate Easter, but when. Like, very frustrating. really, really interesting story. So essentially, we kind of see the churches at a ceasefire. So as far as we know, the Eastern churches more or less maintained what they were doing as did the Western churches.

And then we're actually not going to hear back officially until the synodal letter attached to the official text of the Council of Nicaea in 325, which is probably the least important thing that is resolved in the Council of Nicaea, given all the other really important stuff.

GOBBA GOOL (29:46.187)
You know there's one guy Bishop Dave or something like left like yes. Yes, they did it Like that was his thing

Jim Salmon (29:54.511)
He was the one guy where it's like 4.55 PM on the last day of the committee. And he's like, we actually didn't resolve, hold on, we actually didn't resolve the Easter thing. And they're like, my gosh, we really did. And so there's just like this tiny little paragraph at the end of the council, of the Nicene resolution, which says, let's see.

GOBBA GOOL (30:01.549)
Yeah.

It's right. He's this meant a lot to one guy. Yeah.

Jim Salmon (30:20.374)
We also send you the good news of the settlement concerning the Holy Posh, namely that in answer to your prayers, this question has been resolved. All the brethren in the East who have hitherto followed the Jewish practice will henceforth observe the custom of the Romans and of yourselves and all of us who from ancient times have kept Easter together with you. So he's basically like, we're all on the same page. Now we're gonna do this the right way.

GOBBA GOOL (30:45.926)
You know why that makes total sense that they were willing to play ball in the East? It's because the Jewish influence had watered down to nothing at that point. So they're just like, who cares?

Jim Salmon (30:55.092)
Yeah, I mean, well, dude, you got to think like the impact of the destruction of the temple and like the great diaspora of Jewish believers. yeah, Jewish believers were not nearly as centralized in the church anymore, but that's a really good point.

GOBBA GOOL (31:03.362)
Yes.

GOBBA GOOL (31:13.132)
Yeah, that makes total sense that they're they're, you know, they don't care to just leave abandoned that tradition.

Jim Salmon (31:19.544)
Right.

So and essentially so the funny thing that they do so this is this is the resolution that they come to at Nicaea and this is actually proposed I believe it's proposed maybe it was just endorsed by Emperor Constantine himself Emperor Constantine has a letter that Eusebius quotes which I want to quote from also because it Maybe exposes a couple of biases that existed here. He says for we have in our power This is Constantine speaking if we abandon their

the Jews custom to prolong the due observance of this ordinance to fewer future ages by a truer order, which we have preserved from the very day of the passion until the present time. Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd for we have received from our savior a different way." And I didn't mention some of the harsher quotes he has, but he's basically like, why on earth would we do anything in collaboration with the Jews?

Like that doesn't make any sense to me. And again, it's like Constantine's a Roman emperor. You know, when you get closer to Roman culture, you tend to lose a lot of the deference towards Judaism that early Christians had. and so, yeah. So essentially they develop a system that allows them to mathematically assert when the Passover would be by essentially

GOBBA GOOL (32:30.446)
Mmm.

Jim Salmon (32:47.346)
aligning it not with Passover, but with spring equinox. And so even now to this day, the first, the way that you figure out when Easter is, is by being the first Sunday following the spring equinox, which is typically in and around March 21st. So they, it's kind of ironic cause they're basically like, we don't want to do anything with the Jews. So we're going to figure out a way to

find out when the Equinox is and it's like, well, why is the Equinox important? Oh, it's because that's when Passover is. It's like, oh, okay. You're just, um, that's right. That's right. They're, kind of, you know, streamlining, streamlining, or actually the opposite of streamline.

GOBBA GOOL (33:26.21)
Yeah, but they're getting there through different steps.

GOBBA GOOL (33:32.32)
rabbis aren't the rabbis aren't doing the astronomy anymore we are yeah

Jim Salmon (33:36.591)
That's right. That's what they were looking for. then the last interesting thing that I'll share before I pass the mic over to you, is the Gregorian Reform. So you guys may have noticed that I said that this was the time of the Julian calendar, which is not the calendar that we observe. So the Gregorian Reform was the 16th century, which is so like...

I know, it's kind of funny to me. It's a very interesting random little thing. So the Julian calendar was considered a year to be 365 and a quarter days long. And scientifically, the true length of a year is 365.2422 days long, which is really close, but over the span of like a thousand years, that could make a big difference.

So basically what they realized in the 16th century was they started using the Julian calendar, I think in the first century BC. But they were like, we've been doing this for like 1700 years and we've been drifting off course. Why does that matter? Well, because

Easter needs to be as close to equinox as possible because equinox is when Passover is and if you just keep drifting and drifting eventually you're gonna freaking have Easter in the middle of winter which has no Passover correlation whatsoever which means it's not connected to Jesus's resurrection. So this is when they introduce a reform on the calendar and they made a few minor adjustments one of which I didn't actually know but it's that

you don't celebrate leap years on you don't celebrate a leap day on a year that's divisible by a hundred unless it's also divisible by 400 so the year 1900 there was no leap year which i did not know

GOBBA GOOL (35:35.15)
just lost already. Nope.

Jim Salmon (35:36.334)
So the funny thing, and this is the last funny thing I'll share, is that, do you know who didn't like this change to a different calendar?

GOBBA GOOL (35:47.606)
Okay, is it Martin Luther?

Jim Salmon (35:49.615)
No, fortunately not. It's the Orthodox. They're like, are you freaking kidding me? Now we're changing up the calendars, huh? And so the reason this is, yeah.

GOBBA GOOL (35:51.979)
Okay. yeah.

GOBBA GOOL (36:02.754)
And this is mid-Reformation. dude, they're probably already like, what are you people doing over there? And then they're like, you want me to change my calendar?

Jim Salmon (36:09.742)
They're like you guys It's literally it so that is why most of the Orthodox like feast days or significant days like whether it's Christmas or Lent or Easter are usually like a week or two after it's because One when they started the Gregorian reform they like cut ten days off just to kind of like catch themselves up

And the Orthodox of course didn't recognize it. Now it's fair to say places like Orthodox parts of the world still follow the Gregorian calendar, but with their church rituals and festivals and stuff, they use the Julian calendar still. So that's more times than I've said calendar in a long time, especially in an episode. yeah.

GOBBA GOOL (36:59.544)
Well done. So I still don't understand, but I feel like I would grade you. I would grade you an A plus actually.

Jim Salmon (37:06.114)
Honestly man, just don't make me say it again because I don't think I could do it twice calendars are so strange

GOBBA GOOL (37:10.606)
All right, dude. I know. It's very confusing. You know what gets me is, as you were saying, so they switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar for that, I was thinking about when they switched in general to the Gregorian calendar, which was like, I want to say 12th century or something. Does that sound right?

Jim Salmon (37:15.235)
Gosh.

Jim Salmon (37:33.676)
No, was like 16th century.

GOBBA GOOL (37:37.154)
That's when the Gregorian calendar is old.

Jim Salmon (37:38.913)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I'm looking around.

GOBBA GOOL (37:46.539)
Anyway, as you look it up.

Jim Salmon (37:47.886)
1582.

GOBBA GOOL (37:50.264)
How old is the Gregorian calendar?

Jim Salmon (37:53.646)
1582. Yeah.

GOBBA GOOL (37:55.095)
my gosh, my timeline is way off. Anyway, how did they know when January 1st was? Like, that's my thought is like, how do they know when the year ends? I can't even wrap my mind around it.

Jim Salmon (38:04.43)
I

Jim Salmon (38:10.592)
It's cause my flat brain is like, yeah, I know when it's July 1st. It's when the calendar says that. So what scientist was like, hmm, this July 1st seems a little early this year. That's why I'm glad that the church has smarter people than the two of us to figure this out.

GOBBA GOOL (38:17.184)
It's when calendar tell me. I know dude.

GOBBA GOOL (38:24.18)
I know. I,

GOBBA GOOL (38:33.758)
Okay. Well, I have some fun little tidbits on Easter here. As I pull my notes up, I want to give you guys a random little history dive if you want to go. So there is a letter from an Anabaptist theologian named Schwenkfeld responding to Martin Luther. So you, you know, I mentioned Martin Luther because in my current studies,

Jim Salmon (38:42.04)
Sweet.

GOBBA GOOL (39:02.734)
through Anabaptist history that I'm doing for that class. His name just keeps popping up and he's just so unbelievably uncharitable to them, which he was not known for being a charitable guy. So there's this guy named Schwenkfeld who Luther accuses of being a Eudachianist and like says all these super horrible, like rough things about.

Jim Salmon (39:16.398)
That's also true.

GOBBA GOOL (39:28.012)
And he just like, just writes it in his little notes and sends it to a letter or somebody. Anyway, so it gets back to Schwenkfeld and Schwenkfeld responds with the most charitable, grace-filled, theological slam dunk I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Like he eviscerates Luther with like a smile and like a handshake. So I'm just saying, if you guys, I got my notes up on Easter, but if you guys want a little deep dive into something fun,

Just dig into that. It's good.

Jim Salmon (39:59.319)
that was just that was unrelated that was gonna be like and this was when he's like blessed Easter to you Martin Luther or something like that

GOBBA GOOL (40:09.248)
No, I can't find anything. I didn't have, I didn't look super hard into Luther's connection with Easter, but there is a legend that the Easter bunny and that came from Luther. Yeah. So the reason why is it does come from German folklore.

Jim Salmon (40:26.382)
Yeah.

Jim Salmon (40:32.302)
That sounds about right.

GOBBA GOOL (40:33.398)
So the very, yeah, and then immigrants in 18th century, like German immigrants in 18th century America brought it here. But basically this little Easter bunny is, so it's just like Christmas. There's a bunch of secularists that are like, actually, that was a super pagan symbol all along. And there's not a lot of history to prove that.

But what I did find, I found another weird thing is that like apparently ancient people had considered Easter or bunnies, not Easter, bunnies, hermaphrodites, and that they could reproduce asexually.

Jim Salmon (41:21.406)
actually makes sense because of how fast, how fast they reproduce.

GOBBA GOOL (41:22.67)
And so, so, so the rabbits can have babies by themselves. Do you know who else had a baby by herself? The Virgin Mary. So there's, dude, there's, it's just a theory. A food theory. So I don't know, I don't, I,

Jim Salmon (41:37.36)
That's the connection. That's crazy.

GOBBA GOOL (41:50.679)
I'm not saying that's for sure where it came from. I'm just, gave you guys some legend. And then yes, the legend about Luther introducing it. it's not that the Easter bunny came from a connection to the Virgin Mary. It's that rabbits were associated with Mary already, like for a long time, supposedly. Now.

Jim Salmon (41:55.158)
I like it though. I like it.

GOBBA GOOL (42:12.05)
I know just dude every little rock we've been doing I've been on the podcast for over a year now and I've been like in seminary and I swear I just like every little theological rock I look under there's just like a black hole.

Jim Salmon (42:23.918)
See, this is what's so good about the medieval church is that they were like, something interesting, spring equinox, we need to update the calendar. Here, Marshall, Marshall, grab those charts so we can recalculate the movements of the moon. And they're like, you see those rabbits over there? Did you know they don't actually have to mate with one another? It's like they can be simultaneous genius.

GOBBA GOOL (42:39.468)
Yeah.

GOBBA GOOL (42:44.227)
Yeah.

Right. Also, a dragon might fly over the hills at any moment and destroy us. Yeah. Anyway, where am I? Where are my calculus calculations? Yeah, I know. I know. So the earliest mention that we have for sure historically of the Easter Bunny is from 17th century.

Jim Salmon (42:53.742)
They can like simultaneously be geniuses. Crazy time to be alive dude. love-

GOBBA GOOL (43:16.91)
a little medical pamphlet and it was written to where's the name? It's from Johannes Richier and it looks like it's written to George Frank or Johannes is writing under George Frank. Yes. So

Regardless of who wrote it. No, never mind. My reading comprehension sucks. George Frank wrote it to Johannes Richier. But anyway, so wild way I found this. So I did some digging and I found reference to it. I found it on archive. It is only in Latin. I do not know Latin yet. So I literally downloaded the PDF and I said to chat GPT.

Jim Salmon (43:53.102)
Okay.

GOBBA GOOL (44:14.058)
translate this. And it did it. It did it from

Jim Salmon (44:16.268)
Yeah. It's from the 17th century?

GOBBA GOOL (44:21.9)
Yeah. Living in the 17th century. Ay.

Jim Salmon (44:22.562)
and it's all in Latin.

But I thought, that was a good reference.

GOBBA GOOL (44:30.636)
You know, he like sold out SoFi Stadium.

Jim Salmon (44:34.39)
Yeah, yeah. He brought out Lauryn Hill, dawg. Yeah. Should we have a chump talk or should just talk about Kanye?

GOBBA GOOL (44:35.234)
That's crazy. Anyway, I know. Nope. Unless LM pays for it.

Jim Salmon (44:46.478)
I think LM's probably a big Kanye fan. There's our obligatory LM shout out for the episode.

GOBBA GOOL (44:49.037)
Yeah.

That's right. It happens every episode. So yeah, it's just in Latin. And so it looks like it's dated 1682.

Jim Salmon (45:00.686)
Okay, so what did the chat GPT overlord say?

GOBBA GOOL (45:01.741)
Yeah.

GOBBA GOOL (45:06.05)
Well, I wish I knew enough Latin to say I for sure confirmed it, but I tried to scan back and see. So anyway, here's what it says. I'm just going to read from the top. in various regions of Germany today, certain errors are maintained which claim the authority of antiquity. Among these may be counted Easter eggs called Austerriere during Easter, both in rural.

and urban areas, eggs boiled hard are displayed not only plain, but also dyed in various colors, especially violet, red, yellow, green, decorated with figures and inscriptions. So before I continue on, the egg dyeing also comes from the there's apparently in the East, you would take the egg like the Eastern Church is what I read, and you would dye it red.

to symbolize like a mortal death. And the breaking of that shell is the shedding of your mortal coil, so to speak.

Jim Salmon (46:07.726)
Mmm.

Jim Salmon (46:14.062)
That's kinda cool.

GOBBA GOOL (46:15.682)
yeah, dude, see that's, love like, you just add a little droplet of like healthy mysticism in and like everything has got so much symbology. Symbology just gave me a new word.

Jim Salmon (46:28.718)
Those Eastern dudes, knew what to do. Yeah, literally, I was talking to a guy at church today who was raised in the Orthodox church and he talked about growing up and dying, dying the Easter eggs red, which I totally would not think they would do 100%. Yes, yes.

GOBBA GOOL (46:39.198)
No way. All right, sweet. I was actually worried my research on that was a little sloppy, but.

Jim Salmon (46:46.206)
Hey, anecdotal evidence, brother, we're good. I definitely did not think that egg dying was something that the Orthodox guys did, so that's reassuring, yeah.

GOBBA GOOL (46:48.28)
Confirmed confirmed so

GOBBA GOOL (46:55.756)
Yeah. So here we have, here we are. It continues on. eggs are not only given by God parents or their God children, but also exchanged among friends and lovers among the Russians. According to reports, people greet one another at Easter with a kiss and a present colored eggs, along with the greeting Christ has risen. So the eggs are the eggs. So this is what's so interesting is when John and I were talking.

Jim Salmon (47:18.382)
actually kind of sick. Yeah, that's not bad.

GOBBA GOOL (47:25.6)
about what we should do for our episode. We were like, handle the calendar. That'll be cool. And then I said, and I'm going to figure out how those darned pagans ruined our holiday with this little Easter, Easter bunny. Just wait. Just wait. So in some regions, instead of eggs, more valuable gifts, clothing, gold, silver, or exchange. Authorities have attempted to restrain this custom with fines. Probably, probably some Puritans, actually.

He's writing about that time. so anyway.

Jim Salmon (47:54.638)
Yeah

It's like there was a select minority who did not like this practice at all.

GOBBA GOOL (48:04.11)
Mm hmm. So scholars are uncertain about the origin of this custom. Remember, the point of this pamphlet is actually the author doesn't really care about the eggs or why he gets into later about the medical problems of people eating too many eggs and how they can die. That's what the point of this is. But he's just giving you a little backstory, a little taste. OK, Jewish origin. Jews used hard boiled eggs symbolically during Passover. OK, pagan origin.

Jim Salmon (48:26.263)
Right, alright.

GOBBA GOOL (48:34.06)
Some connected to ancient festivals honoring castor and pollocks. Lent origin. During Lent, eggs were forbidden. After Easter, large quantities accumulated and then were consumed.

Jim Salmon (48:46.56)
were forbidden during all of Lent?

GOBBA GOOL (48:49.068)
Yeah, that was that's a thing for sure. Yeah.

Jim Salmon (48:51.788)
I didn't know that. That's interesting.

GOBBA GOOL (48:54.488)
Here we, so it's in this pamphlet though that a hare, the Easter bunny hides eggs for children. So this is chat GPT. Let me see if I can get into the actual.

Jim Salmon (49:03.704)
Mm-hmm.

GOBBA GOOL (49:13.322)
I had it. I could have butchered the Latin. Long story short, this guy mentions a little hair, an Easter hair. And this is the first historical reference to the Easter bunny we have. Obviously, when it comes to these folklore things, this thing could have around forever. And people could have would have been doing it. And I don't know why it got attributed to Luther. There might be a strong argument for it, but I think that could make sense.

Jim Salmon (49:42.222)
Okay, okay.

GOBBA GOOL (49:42.807)
I think I'm tracking with where the Easter bunny might have come from. And then just because I have to, because this is kind of funny, now he gets into the main point of his paper where he's talking about a monk who died after eating hard-boiled eggs, overeating, I should say. There was a young girl who got constipated after eating too many. I think she lived. And no, I said a monk died and then a young girl got constipated.

Jim Salmon (50:01.948)
Jim Salmon (50:06.95)
you said she died.

okay.

GOBBA GOOL (50:13.376)
And then a young boy got dysentery.

GOBBA GOOL (50:19.488)
So this guy just is like hating on eggs. So he talks about the negatives of hard-boiled eggs. He says they're difficult to digest. They produce thick and unhealthily bodily humors. They burden the stomach and are harmful to those with weak digestions.

Jim Salmon (50:37.87)
Does that hold up to today's like scientific stuff?

GOBBA GOOL (50:39.79)
I don't know, I'm not a nutritionist, you're gonna ask me? I don't know.

Jim Salmon (50:48.142)
Check this out real quick.

GOBBA GOOL (50:50.082)
Vomiting, if illness occurs from eating eggs, know, vomit, use an enema treatment depends on symptoms. This is just the weirdest document. And that's

Jim Salmon (51:02.496)
because it's like it's like meaningfully historical but then it's also like but let's get to why i'm really talking about this

GOBBA GOOL (51:05.998)
why I love history. So anyway, yeah, so

Jim Salmon (51:16.012)
Nutritionists largely consider hard-boiled eggs to be one of the healthiest ways to produce or to eat protein without added fats and essential nutrients like choline vitamin A lutein Yeah, sorry, I just hard-boiled egg specifically That's right, good luck good luck keeping your certificate certification 400 years later

GOBBA GOOL (51:30.69)
So eggs are good for you? Take that, George Frank, Doctor of Medicine and Philosophy. Foolish.

GOBBA GOOL (51:43.436)
Yeah, we're coming for it.

Yeah, so essentially the Easter bunny has been around for a very long time. Developed in Germany, came to America through immigrants into Pennsylvania, and now you can't walk down any store aisle through the months of like February. Well, when Valentine's Day ends all the way up to Easter without seeing a chocolate Easter hair. Isn't that fascinating?

Jim Salmon (52:15.714)
Yeah, it is really interesting. Right. Well, it's not unlike Santa Claus, right? Because like Santa Claus is very Christian and connected with this holiday and some people see Christmas as only a Santa Claus thing. That is so strange.

GOBBA GOOL (52:18.742)
And it's still a Christian symbol. Still a Christian symbol.

GOBBA GOOL (52:36.574)
I did forget to say, so the Easter bunny would come and give presents to good children. So there wasn't, that's very German. I don't know if there's like a Krampus equivalent. The anti Easter bunny, the posh, I don't know. No, said posh hair. I was going to say like the posh hair, know, like the

Jim Salmon (52:43.054)
yeah, that sounds very German folklore.

Like an anti Easter bunny. Like the Easter crow or something like the Easter possum. I like the Easter possum. like scurries in through the floorboards and he just like steals your toys. I'm terrified. Dude, I'd be more afraid of him than of Krampus. That sounds so scary.

GOBBA GOOL (53:07.038)
Just like, he just like, he just hisses at you.

GOBBA GOOL (53:17.754)
I don't think you can.

Jim Salmon (53:18.37)
This giant possum creeping in my house.

GOBBA GOOL (53:21.358)
That's right. And then, obviously, the tradition of hiding the eggs and all that. So I have another one. I have two more, technically. We'll see if we get to both. Or I'll just probably blitz the third one. So have you ever attended a sunrise service?

Jim Salmon (53:45.208)
Maybe like one time. Yeah, it's not really in my circle.

GOBBA GOOL (53:49.461)
It is an old tradition, which is it's biblical, right? Because, you know, you read the gospel accounts like the angel boom shows up like roughly before dawn. So so anyway, it's biblical. But apparently now this is an early reference to the sunrise service. The Moravian Church.

Jim Salmon (53:52.76)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jim Salmon (54:02.957)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

GOBBA GOOL (54:18.026)
in Germany, we just can't escape Germany, man. So, you don't even know what I said. You were just typing a bunch and then just hit me with a soundboard.

Jim Salmon (54:22.166)
That's it, man.

Jim Salmon (54:28.076)
You said you can't escape the Germans. No, I heard you. I can multitask.

GOBBA GOOL (54:32.118)
Wow, that sounded so soundboard-y. That's it, man.

Jim Salmon (54:36.622)
Great point, Taylor. Well spoken.

GOBBA GOOL (54:40.056)
That's right. That's... Couldn't put it better myself. Anyway, stop clicking away. It sounds like you're writing an essay. Moravian Church in Germany. So they claim this. They have some diaries. Believe it or not, my source for this is a secondary source and it is...

Jim Salmon (54:54.382)
Mm-hmm.

GOBBA GOOL (55:03.534)
This month in Moravian history, it was clearly written in Microsoft Word and then saved as a PDF. It's number 18 from April 2007.

Jim Salmon (55:08.983)
You

Jim Salmon (55:15.34)
Okay, yeah.

GOBBA GOOL (55:16.276)
So, and it's got a little picture of like an old engraving and it has some sources on the bottom that are all in German. I'm willing to bet that whoever wrote this is a great historian. Anyway, right, I'm taking that gamble live on air. So this is him quoting the diary. This is me quoting him quoting the diary. So these are young men in 1732.

Jim Salmon (55:30.459)
You're probably right.

Jim Salmon (55:34.626)
You

GOBBA GOOL (55:43.853)
We agreed among our band of young men that this Easter morning we were to go up to the hutberg early before the rise of the sun. This happened early before four o'clock. After we'd spent one and a half hours with singing, we returned to have a prayer meeting during which we sang several hymns and read the third chapter of Peter's first letter. And he continues, he says, this morning we had the nicest celebration among our graves.

Is it that so precious? So it's it's like back when you and I were hanging out with all the boys and like one Easter Eve, we were like, dude, let's walk over to the cemetery and like have a little Easter celebration.

Jim Salmon (56:14.606)
That's actually awesome. That's super cool.

Jim Salmon (56:27.8)
No, that's so cool. I love that. That is so cool. I gotta learn more about these Moravians, dude. That might be where I lay my hat denominationally. I don't think I'll ever find a Moravian church, but...

GOBBA GOOL (56:30.913)
Yeah.

GOBBA GOOL (56:40.974)
Shoot, I just...

Jim Salmon (56:43.798)
I did a tiny little search as you were, when I was giving you all my soundboard answers. So the sunrise service originally started as just the Easter vigil, which was a medieval thing where they would have mass as the sun was rising. But it was, as you pointed out, the Moravians who kind of made it more of a tradition. And then in the 19th century, it kind of bled into Protestant circles and then immigrated to the States.

GOBBA GOOL (56:48.62)
Right?

GOBBA GOOL (57:10.092)
So the Moravians are the first Protestants to do it.

Jim Salmon (57:14.318)
I think they might be. Yeah, I think they might be. Because it says they do, there is a like famous Moravian sunrise service that happens. Yeah, it says there's a famous Moravian sunrise service that happens in Winston-Salem, North Carolina that has happened every year since 1772 in America, which is crazy.

GOBBA GOOL (57:37.56)
So this group from Moravia came over to America, settled in North Carolina, and kept the tradition going. So this is the origins of their doing it. OK, yeah.

Jim Salmon (57:47.746)
Yeah.

think so, yeah. Dude, shout out some Arabians dude, they just earned a bunch of points. I'm gonna look up this celebration thing, that's really cool.

GOBBA GOOL (58:01.249)
Easter. Yeah, so you know they sing hymns and I think it's awesome. So the next year word got out about what these young men did and the next year everybody's apparently like super excited about it and so it says

Jim Salmon (58:02.35)
We'll see.

Jim Salmon (58:22.35)
Mm-hmm.

GOBBA GOOL (58:26.478)
What is he quoting here? I think he's still quoting the diaries. Yeah, he is. The congregation arose at four o'clock in the morning and assembled in the Saul. Why am I yawning so much? Wake up! Following to him, Christ Jesus lay in death-strong bonds. We all proceeded in pairs with music playing to the graves of our brethren, saying and played to the glory of our risen lamb and rejoice that he lives.

and we shall live with him and that death has no power over us. From there we returned after sunrise to the Saul singing as we went.

Jim Salmon (59:03.342)
Beautiful. I love that. That's a great celebration.

GOBBA GOOL (59:06.456)
We don't normally get nice little bows like this in church history. Yeah.

Jim Salmon (59:14.574)
Yeah, usually it's like, and then they got to the synagogues and burned them down. So, you know, it has been a really refreshing break from the Crusades, honestly.

GOBBA GOOL (59:19.118)
Yes. Dude.

GOBBA GOOL (59:24.296)
I know. So you did point out that, yeah, there was some liturgical stuff, but it would appear that the modern sunrise service is traced back to them. yes, the last little... Well, I was just going to say, here's your last little one minute history. Many of you probably sang, as you hear this a few days ago on Easter, you probably sang the hymn, Christ the Lord is risen today.

Jim Salmon (59:31.021)
Mm-hmm.

Jim Salmon (59:36.45)
Which is super cool. Which is really really cool. And no, go ahead.

GOBBA GOOL (59:54.85)
You know who wrote that?

Jim Salmon (59:56.75)
John Wesley.

GOBBA GOOL (59:58.809)
Charles Wesley. yeah, well, I mean, they both probably wrote it together, but yeah.

Jim Salmon (01:00:00.248)
Was it Charles Wesley?

They both wrote hymns. Wait, really? let's freakin' go, okay.

GOBBA GOOL (01:00:05.644)
Yeah, John and Charles like co-published their stuff. Maybe, maybe.

Jim Salmon (01:00:11.63)
To be fair, if you ask me any him who wrote it, the answer is usually John or Charles Wesley.

GOBBA GOOL (01:00:16.674)
That's your answer.

So.

GOBBA GOOL (01:00:23.19)
Charles Wesley actually has written my favorite hymn of all time. Do you know what it is?

Jim Salmon (01:00:27.214)
Which one's that? I was gonna say Howlfirma Foundation. That's literally by Martin Luther. No, On Christ the Solid Rock.

GOBBA GOOL (01:00:41.409)
It's a Christmas hymn.

Jim Salmon (01:00:43.746)
Holy Night. No, Holy Night was written in like the 19th century. That's a good one. That's a good one.

GOBBA GOOL (01:00:46.126)
Hark the Herald Angels sing. Yeah. So that's where that came from. Actually came from his hymns and sacred poems. No, I have had a crazy long day. need to go to bed. It's 17, 1739. So, okay. And then here's my little final add on. So Protestant hymns.

Jim Salmon (01:00:58.968)
Need a little coffee there, big guy.

Jim Salmon (01:01:04.366)
I'm sorry.

GOBBA GOOL (01:01:15.946)
Obviously Martin Luther was writing them, but they really didn't explode until the 18th century because all the way up to like the 17th century, they didn't even know if they should be singing in church.

Jim Salmon (01:01:31.966)
that's really interesting. Okay.

GOBBA GOOL (01:01:33.674)
Especially among Baptist and Separatist groups. Especially among them. Because they just associated singing with like lame high church sort of ritual.

Jim Salmon (01:01:39.51)
Mm-hmm.

Jim Salmon (01:01:47.544)
That is interesting. Well, and cause like a lot of the hymns, their melodies were taken from like pub songs, right? And I'm sure that probably got some backlash. Really?

GOBBA GOOL (01:01:53.856)
I didn't even care about that. No, they didn't even care about that. It was it was literally like the worship services for the word of God.

Jim Salmon (01:02:04.222)
fascinating okay I would have totally thought there'd be some pearl clutters who were like we're not gonna sing this song to the tune of poker face by Lady Gaga

GOBBA GOOL (01:02:05.411)
Yeah.

GOBBA GOOL (01:02:12.334)
That hadn't started yet from my understanding. I could be completely wrong, so stop asking questions. But we will do a history on hymns one day, I think.

Jim Salmon (01:02:15.99)
Okay, interesting.

Jim Salmon (01:02:23.724)
I think a history on just like the progression of worship would be interesting.

GOBBA GOOL (01:02:27.884)
That's a that's a whole nother series, big dog.

Jim Salmon (01:02:30.68)
That could be, that could be, yeah. Alright, well, listener, sorry we're a couple days late, but now you're ready and raring for Easter next year, so make sure you listen to this regularly so you don't forget any of the stuff we taught you. Don't ask us.

GOBBA GOOL (01:02:40.078)
That's right, which is... And who knows when Easter next year is gonna be? Who? Don't... Yes. That's right. So thanks again to our sponsors.

Jim Salmon (01:02:50.392)
Call your local rabbi.

Yeah for sure and if you guys are interested in any of the amazing perks we have, feel free to check out the link on our show notes. But otherwise, we love you guys. We hope you had a beautiful holy week and we look forward to talking to you next time. See you later.

GOBBA GOOL (01:03:09.689)
Bye bye!