Easter: A Cyclical Feast

with recipes for braised lamb shanks and a tortilla for Easter brunch

Palms near Piazza Armerina, Sicily

I began work on this week’s story on Palm Sunday—Domenica delle Palme in Italy, the start of Holy Week, when Christians all over the world celebrate the triumphal procession of Jesus into Jerusalem, followed by his arrest, trial, and execution, and then, of course, his resurrection on Easter Sunday. The palm fronds carried to the church on Palm Sunday are symbols of victory and of triumph over death.

I’ve always felt that Easter, no matter where in the world it’s celebrated, is in essence a Mediterranean festival, closely tied to the emerging green of Mediterranean fields, the swelling buds on grapevines and olives, the overwhelming sense of fecundity, of an earth liberated from winter’s grasp. And the story of the god (or goddess) who dies and is resurrected just as the earth springs back to life is an old Mediterranean tale, celebrated in the most ancient religions and rituals, its antiquity and endurance testifying to the myth’s power, whether it speaks of Persephone or Adonis, Ishtar or Osiris. I confess that I’m not a believer; the last time I went to church was for the funeral of Ugo the postman back before Covid. Still, even as a nonbeliever, I feel a powerful resonance around Easter throughout the Christian Mediterranean. It strikes a deep note with me, reflecting the antiquity of this festival that celebrates the return of new life to the earth, the return of Persephone from her incarceration, and Demeter’s outpouring of joy when her daughter comes home.

olive terraces, Umbria

In Italy, and much of the rest of the Mediterranean as well, it’s actually not Palm Sunday but Olive Sunday, Domenica dell’Olivo. Why so?

While it’s true that palms grow all around the Mediterranean, flourishing especially in North Africa (think of the great oasis of Tozeur on the edge of the Tunisian Sahara), it’s the olive tree that symbolizes Mediterranean culture (cuisine too), and always has; some say it was not palms but olive branches that the Jerusalem crowds waved to salute the Messiah’s procession on that long ago Sunday. So it is that olive branches, sometimes woven into intricate motifs, are carried into churches on Palm Sunday to be blessed by the priest. Once blessed, they are prized tokens, pinned over the marital bed, presumably to encourage fertility, or above the house entrance as a protection against lightning strikes and evil spirits. To me, the magic of the olive branches seems much more in keeping with the myth and the festival than the dry, spiky palm fronds that were offered in the churches of my childhood.

Bruno planted his potatoes a couple of weeks before Easter, that is, at the dark of the moon, and there was a reason for that too.

But there’s another purpose for the priest-blessed branches, one that Bruno explained to me earlier in March as he dug and planted his new crop of potatoes in the field behind the farmhouse. “When the wheat, the grano, comes along,” he expounded, “if it doesn’t come along just right, then you take the branches out to the edge of the campo, the field, and light them and let the smoke drift right over the campo and it will make everything right.”

“Gets rid of the bugs?” I asked.

“Bugs,” he said, “and sickness, malattia, anything that goes wrong really.”

Like all his neighbors, Bruno planted his potatoes a couple of weeks before Easter, that is, at the dark of the moon, and there was a reason for that too. Because potatoes are a root crop they should be planted and harvested when there is the least amount of light in the atmosphere, which means, when the moon is dark. Otherwise, they may rot in storage.

. . . the wise farmer plants his root crops safely in the dark

This is another deep-seated belief. Call it superstition, if you will, but it actually has a lot of credibility. Think about it: When there is a lot of light in the atmosphere, that is, during the months from the vernal to the autumnal equinox, and especially during periods of a waxing to full moon, plants that need light are those that grow above the ground (peas, lettuce, cabbage, fava beans) and flourish in the brightness. Plants like Bruno’s potatoes, or carrots, turnips, and the like, grow under the ground in darkness and too much light will cause them to spoil. Think about potatoes that get left out on a counter top and within days develop green streaks of bitter solanine. And that’s why the wise farmer plants the root crops safely in the dark.

It's also why Easter is a movable feast that depends on the moon. Essentially, it’s a way of marking the right time to plant, no matter what you’re planting. The peasant farmer does not have a timepiece—or at least, he didn’t back in the day. Thus, he relied on the church calendar (Easter, Ascension, various saints’ days) to let him know when it was time to plant, to prune, to harvest, even to cut wood in the forest (January at the dark of the moon). The Australian who briefly lived near us had beams riddled with woodworm. Why? Because, the old-timers said (and the more youthful loggers agreed), the beams had been cut at the wrong time of the year.

This is what Patrick Joyce, in his astonishing recent book, Remembering Peasants (Simon & Schuster, 2024), referring to John Berger, calls cyclical time, time that does not progress in a linear fashion but that repeats itself with comforting regularity, year after year.

I realize I’m drifting far, far away from Palm Sunday but I think it’s important to remember the significance of Easter, no matter what our religious beliefs may be. Or not be. It’s a marker, a sign or symbol, of a specific human culture, which is why it’s celebrated even by people who never set foot in church.

And of course, the feast is important too. Scroll down for a magnificent Mediterranean lamb dish full of great Mediterranean flavors.

Braised lamb shanks in a spicy (or not) sauce