The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Easter and the World of Flowers: The Resurrection and Nature AFTER THE stern cold of March, we have had an exceptionally lovely Easter season. This holiday seems...
...And then, in the first dark of evening, he would approach her house with fluttering heart, attach his offering to her doorknob, ring the bell and streak from bush to bush until she appeared and, perhaps, uttered a breathless exclamation of appreciation...
...I suppose schoolteachers of 1960 would find it hard to believe that many a boy in those times fashioned a bouquet for a pretty and devoted educator...
...The good ministers did their best to press home the theological meaning of the great springtime celebration...
...Wherever you go, the world is bursting into bloom...
...In much the same way, they made a happy amalgam of the common people's May Day and the church's celebration of the Resurrection...
...At church this Easter morning, it seemed that all the members of the congregation had plants in their cars for after-service delivery...
...If you are especially fond of roses, azaleas or lilies, your friends will appear bearing the flower of your choice...
...And when we were properly seated in the pews, we discovered that the congregation was ringed with scores of lilies...
...I have often referred to the fact that clever and faithful priests stole Christmas from the Druids...
...But the happy occupants of the new houses fill the empty spots with the nurseryman's wares—and many of these are sure to be flowering shrubs...
...This, too, was the celebration of a resurrection, the resurrection of life, and it was inevitable that the priests should recognize the parallelism between pagan and Christian renewal...
...As I look back, it seems to me that young people then played a larger part in the church than they do in connection with any present-day church I know anything about...
...A few centuries later the new faith spread to the north and west, to England, France and Germany...
...When the builders design a so-called development, they are careful to destroy every tree and plant in sight...
...If there was rejoicing, we take for granted it was at the thought of Christianity's triumph over the evils of the world...
...When I was a child in Ohio I attended the village Methodist church...
...Here in Delaware you can hardly travel a mile without passing a greenhouse, a florist or a nursery...
...An especially pretty girl would be sure to gather numerous floral offerings in the course of such a romantic evening...
...There were no florists' shops, no greenhouses, no nurseries...
...But for the children and young people what was really important was gathering flowers and decorating the church...
...Each boy would devise his biggest and most gorgeous bouquet for the girl he adored in complete silence during the daytime restraints in the schoolroom...
...So we carried them home and arranged them in cornucopias with romantic—rather than religious—intent...
...The forsythias, the magnolias, the flowering cherries—to mention only those blooming at the moment—turn the whole world into a lovely garden...
...For uncounted centuries the inhabitants of the dark forests had celebrated the return of the sun by dancing on the green, singing songs and beautifying their primitive dwellings with the loveliest flowers of field and forest...
...We knew precisely where and when they would bloom...
...Wherever I go, it seems that the flower business has become one of our most important commercial enterprises...
...This great celebration, one of the most solemn and serious in the turning year, then had a completely religious significance...
...Its date was regulated by the full moon so that the faithful would have its help on their way home from pious celebrations...
...But now—for good or ill—I live in a quite different world...
...Where Christianity originated, I suppose Easter was symbolic of the mysteries of the new religion...
...Their elegance, slender beauty and dainty perfume obliged one to raise his thoughts to the level of that fine world...
...Thus, the converted heathen were permitted to add an attractive dividend to their new religious faith and hardly a priest or bishop raised objection...
...And in those days we had a real May Day closely connected with Easter...
...This holiday seems to be gradually shedding its religious significance and increasingly taking on the character of an international May Day...
...The Crucifixion and Resurrection would usually be described in dramatic terms, and many members of the congregation took these recitations quite seriously...
...But there was no end of flowers to be had for the picking...
...The habits of people show that Easter is Flower Day...
Vol. 43 • May 1960 • No. 18
