What Have Writers Said About Easter?

February 2023
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Easter is one of the more memorable holidays for me, and now (with my kids), I’m experiencing a whole other side of the Easter festivities. Beyond the religious overtones intertwined in the day, there’s also the fabulous Easter bunny–a larger-than-life figure, who is such a favorite figure in our holiday imaginings. Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, Mother Earth, Father Time–which figure is your favorite.

Which of the many aspects of Easter do you most enjoy? Which poems, stories, essays, and other literary explorations do you first think about when you imagine Easter?

“A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“[A] stone at dawn / cold water in the basin / these walls’ rough plaster / imageless…”
– Amy Clampitt, Easter Morning
“A strangely reflective, even melancholy day. Is that because, unlike our cousins in the northern hemisphere, Easter is not associated with the energy and vitality of spring but with the more subdued spirit of autumn?” – Hugh Mackay
“And he departed from our sight that we might return to our heart, and there find Him. For He departed, and behold, He is here.” – St. Augustine, Confessions
“And what Thou art may never be destroyed.” – Emily Bronte, No coward soul is mine
“Angels, roll the rock away; / Death, yield up thy mighty prey: / See, He rises from the tomb, / Glowing with immortal bloom.” – Thomas Scott, “Easter Angels”
“Chocolate causes certain endocrine glands to secrete hormones that affect your feelings and behavior by making you happy. Therefore, it counteracts depression, in turn reducing the stress of depression. Your stress-free life helps you maintain a youthful disposition, both physically and mentally. So, eat lots of chocolate!” – Elaine Sherman, Book of Divine Indulgences
“Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.” – W.H. Auden
“Easter is not a time for groping through dusty, musty tomes or tombs to disprove spontaneous generation or even to prove life eternal. It is a day to fan the ashes of dead hope, a day to banish doubts and seek the slopes where the sun is rising, to revel in the faith which transports us out of ourselves and the dead past into the vast and inviting unknown.” – Lewiston Tribune
“Easter is the demonstration of God that life is essentially spiritual and timeless.” – Charles M. Crowe
“Easter spells out beauty, the rare beauty of new life.” – S.D. Gordon
“For I remember it is Easter morn, / And life and love and peace are all new born.” – Alice Freeman Palmer
“I think of the garden after the rain; / And hope to my heart comes singing, / ‘At morn the cherry-blooms will be white, / And the Easter bells be ringing!'” – Edna Dean Proctor, “Easter Bells”
“If anyone or anything tries to curse or kill the Goodness at the Center of all things, it will just keep coming back to life. Forever Easter.” – David Housholder, The Blackberry Bush
“It is the hour to rend thy chains, / The blossom time of souls.” – Katherine Lee Bates
“If Easter says anything to us today, it says this: You can put truth in a grave, but it won’t stay there. You can nail it to a cross, wrap it in winding sheets and shut it up in a tomb, but it will rise!” – Clarence W. Hall
“Let every man and woman count himself immortal. Let him catch the revelation of Jesus in his resurrection. Let him say not merely, ‘Christ is risen,’ but ‘I shall rise.'”br> – Phillips Brooks
“Now and in time to be, / Wherever green is worn, /Are changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born.”
– W. Butler Yeats, Easter 1916
“Now, if one supposes that Easter, the Goddess of Spring, cares any more for the after-church parade on Fifth Avenue than she does for her loyal outfit of subjects that assemble at the meeting-house at Cactus, Tex., a mistake has been made. The wives and daughters of the ranchmen of the Frio country put forth Easter blossoms of new hats and gowns as faithfully as is done anywhere, and the Southwest is, for one day, a mingling of prickly pear, Paris, and paradise.”
– O. Henry, The Red Roses of Tonia
“Now let the heavens be joyful, / Let earth her song begin: / Let the round world keep triumph, / And all that is therein; / Invisible and visible, / Their notes let all things blend, / For Christ the Lord is risen / Our joy that hath no end.”
– Saint John of Damascus
“‘O don’t you know,’ said Barbara, ‘[the Easter Hare] hides [eggs] in the garden, unless it rains or is very wet; then we have to stay in our bedrooms for fear of frightening him, and he lays them downstairs in the dining-room or drawing-room. However, this has only happened once since I was born, and I am nine years old; it must be always fine at Easter.'”
– Barbara Arndt, Easter Hare
“O let me rise / As larks, harmoniously, / And sing this day thy victories: / Then shall the fall further the flight in me.”
– George Herbert, Easter Wings
“O the Easter bells are gladly ringing, / Let the whole world join the happy lay, / Let the hills and vales break forth in singing, / Christ, the Lord of Life, is ris’n today.”
– Lizzie Akers, “Easter Bells”
“The fasts are done; the Aves said; / The moon has filled her horn / And in the solemn night I watch / Before the Easter morn. / So pure, so still the starry heaven, / So hushed the brooding air, / I could hear the sweep of an angel’s wings / If one should earthward fare.”
– Edna Dean Proctor, “Easter Morning”
“The great gift of Easter is hope…”
– Basil C. Hume
“The joyful news that He is risen does not change the contemporary world. Still before us lie work, discipline, sacrifice. But the fact of Easter gives us the spiritual power to do the work, accept the discipline, and make the sacrifice.”
– Henry Knox Sherrill
“The story of Easter is the story of God’s wonderful window of divine surprise.”
– Carl Knudsen
“To the cold, dark grave they go / Silently and sad and slow, / From the light of happy skies / And the glance of mortal eyes.”
– Paul Laurence Dunbar, An Easter Ode
“Tomb, thou shalt not hold Him longer; / Death is strong, but Life is stronger; / Stronger than the dark, the light; / Stronger than the wrong, the right…”
– Phillips Brooks, “An Easter Carol”
“‘Twas Easter-Sunday. The full-blossomed trees / Filled all the air with fragrance and with joy.”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Spanish Student
“Unfortunately there is nothing more inane than an Easter carol. It is a religious perversion of the activity of Spring in our blood.”
– Wallace Stevens