Spring Spirit: Time for Remembrance, Reverence, and Renewal
- Marilyn Yaquinto, PhD
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
Updated: 24 hours ago
Let's not leave out the exuberance, merriment, and wonder of so many enduring ancient rituals. Or the silliest one that kicks off the new month: April Fools Day.
Spring is complicated, like its conflicted weather. Officially started on March 20, according to the vernal equinox, which marks the start of Spring on most calendars in the Northern Hemisphere. Like always, it was still snowing in the northern-most areas and few seedlings were anywhere in sight.
Today marks the silliest day of the season. April 1 is better known as April Fools Day, with one theory tracing its origins to the changeable weather, which could "fool" us and cause confusion. This is just one of many origin stories. Some argue that this centuries-old tradition resembles festivals such as Hilaria in ancient Rome, once held on March 25.
Mischief is also part of the enduring Holi celebration, a major Hindu festival "of Colours, Love, Equality and Spring" that celebrates "the eternal and divine love of the deities of Radha and Krishna." Participants of Holi, which occurred this year on March 13 and 14, have been known to throw "water and colored powders on one another."
Regardless of how springtime merriment began or how it expresses itself, April Fools Day has come to symbolize a one-day prank-athon inflicted on our friends, family, and co-workers.
This year Parade magazine outlined 60 such pranks to try on April 1, from the mundane to the outrageous. Plenty of props are also available for purchase to help amp up the fun, including remote control spiders, fake roaches, and rubber snakes.
One gag I thought would work all too well on me is a downloadable GIF that's textable to friends and family, and featuring the customary three dots to suggest we're busy typing a message. The fun part (perhaps) is that it just loops endlessly. I could see myself sitting there waiting for the other person to finish typing and eventually running out of patience, to my prankster's delight. (Dear family, I'm on to this one!)
There's also plenty of advice about how to keep things lighthearted and only mildly annoying. What that means is certainly in the eye of the beholder. If we're not the jokesters in our groups, then we're the victims. Many of us will spend a good part of the day waiting to find out if the giggles around us are due to a note stuck to our backs announcing we're not wearing any underwear. (I speak from experience.)
Acts such as putting stool softener in somebody's brownie is not funny nor is it harmless no matter what culture or country we hail from. If there's any doubt about proper limits, check out this advice from a source every child (if only at heart) can trust: Dr. Binocs, the voice behind the popular educational videos featured on Peekaboo Kidz.
Spring's more ancient and reverent rituals
Before and after April 1, and all its associated fool-hardy fun, other vital holidays and rituals associated with some of the world's major religions abound.
For most, first comes the fasting, then the feasting. The shared purpose across many religions of fasting or abstaining from specific foods and drinks is a "measure of discipline and self-reflection" meant to bring believers closer to the Divine or to honor the past with intentional remembrance.
Islam's sacred month of Ramadan began on February 28 and ended on March 30. It dates back to the 7th century and commemorates the "revelation of the Qur'an"Â to the Prophet Muhammad. Eid-al-Fitr, which translates from Arabic to "the festival of breaking the fast," has Muslims around the world gather with friends and families to show their gratitude to Allah with prayer, presents, and celebratory foods.
The Jewish Passover (or Pesach in Hebrew) begins on April 12 and ends April 20. It will culminate in a similar "break the fast," or as Sarah Seltzer called it in the Jewish news outlet Forward, "the post-Pesach carb binge." The carb part refers to once again eating leavened baked goods, forbidden during Passover, and made with leavening or rising agents such as yeast. The holiday commemorates the Israelites' hasty departure from Egypt, which left no time for their bread to rise.
As Seltzer describes her attempts over the years to end Passover with carbs from bagels to pizza crust, she adds, "It's a Jewish tradition to invent your own mini-traditions for the holidays," and this "loose observance kept the meaning of the holiday fresh in my mind."
For Jews, the holiday means a "time of renewal, of Spring, of hope," notes Rabbi Debbie Reichmann, whether rooted in miracles that once saved Moses' people to living anxiously in the modern world. The key, suggests Reichmann, is not to count on miracles but to renew the commitment to always act with "conscience and resilience."
Easter: beyond colored eggs, bunnies and winter witches
Christianity's fasting and feasting period starts with Lent, which began with Ash Wednesday on March 5, and will end a day before Easter Sunday on April 20.
Easter supposedly descends from the Jewish Passover but their interconnections were complicated by the evolution of Christianity. [Check out this exchange between a rabbi and a reverend about these intertwined holidays.] Â
Easter faced further complexity after a split between Roman Catholics and their Orthodox brethren, each celebrating different Easter dates from 1582 forward. It was the result of a clash, in part, between the existing Julian calendar and the newly established Gregorian one.
This year Easter falls on the same day for all Catholics, a rare occurrence, with renewed talk of arranging such a unifying coincidence in the future. Whatever Sunday it falls on each Spring, it's about celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ after a period of sober remembering of his sacrifice and suffering.
I grew up as part of the world's nearly 1.3 billion Catholics who also participate in the pre-Lent show of excess known as Carnival or Mardi Gras.
I've never been to New Orleans for what translates from French to English as Fat Tuesday, but indulged in its spirit just the same. There it's having deep fried dough coated in powdered sugar called a beignet (ben-yay). In our Polish neighborhood in Detroit, it was much the same but filled with jelly or cream, weighing in at what felt like half a pound, and called a pÄ…czki (punch-key).
Once Lent is underway, we Catholics buckle down and give up something we value for the 40 days of Lent, including the above sweets. Lent shares the same sense of "discipline and self-reflection" mentioned above for the other world religions.
We also don't eat meat on Fridays, only fish. At least when I was growing up. I actually remember spitting out a surprise piece of chicken at a friend's house for fear of going straight to Hell. The Church has since relaxed this restriction (after 1966) but much too late for me to ever feel comfortable biting into a hamburger on a Friday night during Lent. As I've said before, some memories die hard, if ever.
We were so ready for Easter Sunday when it finally arrived. Dressed in special hats and our proverbial Sunday best, we went to Mass. Then we came home and I ate my way through a straw-filled basket of jelly beans, assorted chocolates, and edible pastel-colored bunnies. I was always confused when told that the Easter Bunny himself had brought this bounty. And it was okay to bite the head off his likeness, usually made of chocolate or marshmallow filling covered in hardened sugar. I still get a mysterious Easter basket to this day. (A child at heart.)
We also continue to hand-decorate, hard-boiled eggs and eat one of them that day for good luck.
Like Christmas, Easter traditions have found fans among non-Christians, including the notion of Easter egg decorating and egg hunts.
The White House Easter Egg Roll has a history going back to Abraham Lincoln but officially became recognized in 1878, taking place nearly every Easter Monday ever since. The 2025 version continues the more recent tradition of holding a lottery for the tickets, which are available to winners from all states and US territories.
Dating back to paganism, eggs have long represented new life (literally) and rebirth (symbolically) as linked to Spring in the broadest sense. Since about the 13th century, eggs reportedly became part of Easter celebrations for all Christians, thanks to an English king who "purchased eggs ... decorated with colours or gold leaf and given out to his household."
True story or not, what about that Easter Bunny?
As folklorist Tod Thompson reports in Smithsonian Magazine, both eggs and rabbits have ritualistic roots dating back to the Neolithic age in Europe. And folk traditions in both England and Germany speak of an Easter Hare (large rabbit) hiding eggs for children to hunt down.
In addition, eating a pie made with hare or rabbit may have links to enduring "folk traditions of scaring away witches at Easter." It's because the prolifically fertile hare or rabbit, and Spring itself, represent the "promise of new life [and] ... held symbolically in opposition to the life-draining activities of witches and winter."
The season's uplifted spirits and renewed optimism
As we celebrate Spring in so many ways in the weeks ahead, try to embrace its renewed sense of spirituality. And if nothing else, grasp the soul-stirring spectacle of Mother Nature waking up from a long, dormant winter.
Take in the robins and myriad of other birds flitting around our yards preparing nests to lay their eggs and start their broods, clutches and families anew. If that doesn't delight, perhaps the sight of daffodils and crocus already dotting the landscape will. In the DC area, where I live, there is a steady stream of tourists visiting the blossoming cherry trees to marvel at their profusion of delicate, pinkish blooms. They never fail to charm their onlookers.
Beyond April 1st's attempt to make us laugh, Spring is about lifting our spirits through the Divine or in concert with Mother Nature. Whatever the approach, relish this season, with its swings from cold to warm, its shift from fasting to feasting, and its nearly universal commitment to remembrance and renewal. Do both with reverence, and at a special place of worship, including the nearest public park.
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