Outline about Easter (developed)

1.       Holly Week in Panamá.

During lent period we have many traditions and activities, we start this do not eating meat during 40 days, just fish and other kind of food but no eat meat. This is after carnival when start the lent period.

The days of holly weeks are:

§  Ash Wednesday

§  Maundy Monday

§  Holly Tuesday

§  Holly Wednesday

§  Maundy Thursday

§  Good Friday

§  Palm Sunday

a)    Traditions

1.      Procession to Alanje.

During Holly Wednesday, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, people likes to walk to Alanje, they walk with the family or friends. People walk for their sins but also there are people that go there on their knees.

2.     Place “miracles in Jesus ‘cape”.

When people walk to Alanje they walk for their sins and in the end they go to the Alanje`s church to see the statue of Jesus Christ and they put it in the cape miracles or little gifts to him.

3.     Alive representation.

Other tradition to Holly Week is the alive presentation, is like a role-play about Jesus Christ and people wear with the clothes similar to that age and they do this inside the church or outside in the street.

4.     Wakefulness on Thursday.

On Maundy Thursday people usually stay wake up all night in the church, sharing inside the church and doing some activities as singing, listen the story about Jesus Christ and many others.

5.     Spank the trees.

This a very old traditions from our grandparents, they said that on Good Friday you wake up early in the morning and without speak to anyone, you go to the threes and spank and those threes that you spank they will have a lot of fruits. 

b)   Activities:

1.      Places to visit.

People usually travel to highlands for the wheatear and for take a time to relax and reflection.

2.     Spend time with family.

Other activity is when people from Panamá city travel to another province to visit the family and spend time this days also they visit another members of the family.

3.     Go to the church.

When people travel to visit the family and spend time together they like to go to the church, many families likes to go specially for this days.

2.     Holly Week in United States.

The celebration of Easter is always on the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox (the first day of spring). The earliest date is March 22 and the latest date is April 25.

It marks the end of Lent which is a forty day period where Christians fast, pray and ask for forgiveness.

 Easter celebrates the resurrection of Jesus and is thus one of the most important religious holidays in the Christian religion. However, it is also celebrated with more child friendly traditions that include Easter egg hunts, Easter baskets and the Easter bunny. 

a)    Traditions:

1.      The special dish for Easter springtime.

In USA the special food is baked ham, potatoes and vegetables. Another most demanding recipe is hot cross buns.

2.     The bunny Easter.

The Easter Bunny is a rabbit-spirit. Long ago, he was called the" Easter Hare." Hares and rabbits have frequent multiple births so they became a symbol of fertility. The custom of an Easter egg hunt began because children believed that hares laid eggs in the grass. The Romans believed that "All life comes from an egg." Christians consider eggs to be "the seed of life" and so they are symbolic of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

b)    Activities:

1.      The Easter parade.

The Easter Parade is a New York tradition that dates back to the middle of the 1800s. The social elite would attend services at one of the 5th Avenue churches and parade their new fashions down the Avenue afterwards.

The less well to do would come to see what the latest trends were. Many handy seamstresses found inspiration for their client's wardrobes at the parade. It was a combination of religious services and haute couture in the days before TV, when only the wealthiest New Yorkers could attend the hottest Paris fashion shows.

While there is still some fashion involved in the spectacle, the modern version tends to be more fantastic. Live birds nest in bonnets of real flowers and pets are dressed in the latest 5th Avenue doggy wear.

2.     The annual Easter carnival called 'Mardi Gras'.

In the New Orleans, it is a trend of conducting an annual Easter carnival called 'Mardi Gras', which features lot of fun activities like parade, jazz music bands and a bumper party.

The history of a Mardi Gras celebration existed many years before Europeans came to the New World. Sometime in the Second Century, during mid-February (usually February 15 according to the Julian calendar), Ancient Romans would observe what they called the Lupercalia, a circus-type festival which was, in many respects, quite similar to the present day Mardi Gras. This festival honored the Roman deity, Lupercus, a pastoral God associated with Faunus or the Satyr. Although Lupercus is derived from the Latin Lupus (meaning "wolf"), the original meaning of the word as it applies to Roman religion has become obscured over the passage of time.

3.     The Easter game for American kids.

Painting the Easter eggs and then conducting Easter egg hunt games for the kids is what most American parents do on.

On Easter Sunday children wake up to find that the Easter Bunny has left them baskets of candy. He has also hidden the eggs that they decorated earlier that week. Children hunt for the eggs all around the house. Neighborhoods and organizations hold Easter egg hunts, and the child who finds the most eggs wins a prize.

Conclusion:

The Holly Week in Panamá as in United State have something equal but are also different but the true is that in both counties people celebrate the holiday according to their beliefs and their religious denominations. But the principal thing is that Christians commemorate Good Friday as the day that Jesus Christ died and Easter Sunday as the day that he was resurrected.