- Norman Grindley Marcia Goodall, left, and Marie Isaacs, members of the St. Andrew Parish Church in Half-Way Tree, make final adjustments to a beautiful floral arrangement, complete with candle, in preparation for today's Easter Sunday service at the church. The arrangement includes orchids, Easter lilies, chrysanthemums and leather leaf ferns.
Claude Mills, Staff Reporter
TRADITIONALLY, Jamaicans have always used the Lenten season - and especially Holy Week - to introspect, fast, pray, cleanse and recommit their lives to Jesus Christ.
In this vein, Good Friday and Easter Sunday have always enjoyed peak attendance at churches islandwide. However, some contend, the true spirit of Easter continues to elude many.
"We have lost our way a lot. All the holidays are materialistic, we need a positive counter-culture with a belief in coming together for the betterment of everyone," said Reverend Bevis Byfield, lecturer at the United Theological College of the West Indies. "The sense of love being sacrificial is lost.
"With the disintegration of family life, the message is harder to come across, and because of that weakness, we have to develop a counter-culture to fight the dominant culture. The church needs more education," added Rev. Byfield, who is also a minister in the United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman.
According to 25-year-old secretary, Yvette Nicholson, "Many people just attend church because it is the expected thing. Easter is just a bun-and-cheese holiday right now where you stay home and watch the same Ten Commandments movie with Charles Heston, and jump bacchanal at Chukka Cove and stay over at a hotel in Ocho Rios 'till Monday morning."
In a vox pop conducted of young persons, in Half-Way Tree and Cross Roads, Kingston, most youths exhibited religious convictions while the over 20-year-olds displayed cynicism, dubbing Easter "two extra holidays" and in one instance, "bun-and-cheese-and-carnival time".
Some of the traditional activities of Easter include eating fish and bun and cheese, flying kites, egg hunts, and decorating the house and church with masses of Easter lilies.
But Monsignor Richard Albert dismissed the Easter-related activities as "marginal".
"Easter is a call for us to realise we have a commitment to live out the vision of Jesus Christ; that it is better to love than to hate, better to forgive than to hold malice, better to share than consume," he said last week. "It's a trumpet, not to a pie-in-the-sky religion, but to a radical lifestyle.
"If we are not motivated or excited to be radical lovers, then church attendance, and Bible study are nothing but ends to themselves. Church happens between the Sunday afternoon when you leave the building to Sunday morning when you return to it. You have to become a holy communion, not merely receive it," the monsignor added.
Although traditions and customs vary, Easter is still considered the world's greatest religious holiday. The early fathers used to speak of it as the "feast of feasts". However, some contend that carnival may be the reason Jamaicans are so enchanted with the trappings of Easter, locally.
"Easter is just not the same since carnival has come in to profane the deep religious beliefs of the season. People just want to march, and they take great delight in revelling and wanton behaviour; it's not even about the bun and cheese anymore," one preacher said curtly.
In some countries like Trinidad and Tobago, the Lent aspect is strictly followed along with the merry-making and revelry taking place up to midnight on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday called Shrove Tuesday.
However, in Jamaica, carnival activities occur during the height of the Easter weekend, between Good Friday and Easter Monday.
But Easter is still observed by millions, with jubilation and the re-awakening of nature, which symbolises new life and hope for Christians through Christ's resurrection.
