Explained: Why many Christians wake up before dawn on Easter

Every year, Good Friday is preceded by Easter, a Christian holiday commemorating the resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God.

This year’s Easter falls on 31 March.

On Easter or Easter Sunday morning, many Christians wake up early before dawn to celebrate their belief as the sun rises.

To commemorate the holy day at the centre of Christianity, people gather outside on church lawns and beaches, in nearby cemeteries, and national parks.

Let’s take a closer look.

No fixed date for Easter

Easter doesn’t have a fixed date. Based on a lunar-based calendar calculation, it falls between 22 March and 25 April.

“Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the Paschal full moon, which is the first full moon occurring either on or after the spring equinox (21 March),” according to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

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This implies that those who attend the sunrise service on 31 March, will wake up early.

The reason behind waking up early

The early risers’ Easter ritual contains biblical symbolism.

The story of Christ’s resurrection is told differently in each of the four New Testament Gospels, but it always centres on the discovery of Christ’s empty tomb at dawn by four women followers of Jesus, according to the Rev. Ginny Tobiassen, pastor of Home Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, home of one of the most well-known sunrise services.

“When we as Christians stand in a graveyard at dawn, we are saying we believe in the resurrection. We are here among our dead, celebrating the resurrection,” she said.

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It’s a message members of the Moravian Church — one of the oldest Protestant denominations in the world — have sent for nearly 300 years.

The first-ever Easter sunrise service

Whether the Moravian Church held an Easter sunrise service first is unclear. As Tobiassen pointed out, it is an obvious choice given the Gospel stories about the early morning visit to Jesus’ empty tomb.

However, church history reports place the origins of the denomination’s annual custom at Herrnhut, Germany, in 1732, when Moravian refugees fleeing religious persecution fled to and founded the first Renewed Moravian Church settlement.

For the first year, the single men gathered for an all-night prayer vigil, ending with hymn singing in the graveyard they referred to as “God’s Acre.” They invited the whole community the following year, and missionaries spread the tradition beyond the settlement, including to North Carolina.

Rituals during a Moravian sunrise service

Moravians arrived at what would become Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in the 1750s. One of the nation’s oldest Easter morning services is currently held in the city.

It attracts thousands of people, Tobiassen added, not just Moravians but also the curious and those seeking spirituality. It is also available for radio broadcasts and internet viewing.

“People who just want to know what is this thing that Winston-Salem has been doing all this time,” she said. “It’s very much a part of our community’s history.”

Started in 1772, this year will be No. 252.

The Salem Congregation, representing 13 Moravian churches in the city, including Home Moravian Church, where Tobiassen is the minister, organises the sunrise service.

In addition to the longstanding liturgy, the service includes a silent procession to the Salem Moravian Graveyard, also called “God’s Acre,” and concludes among the graves that go back generations.

While Moravians hold their sunrise services in church graveyards, others hold them elsewhere and in various worship styles, including at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington and on Newport Beach in California.

Including music

Moravian congregations are known for their trombone choirs made up mostly of brass and some wind musicians, Tobiassen said, and so the sunrise service will feature a band of about 300 horn players from churches in the region paying Moravian hymns together.

Many of those musicians will have been playing all night, she said. They spread out on street corners, creating a cascade of sound throughout the community as they take turns playing lines of antiphonal hymns, she said.

“The idea is they are alerting people in the community to wake up — the Lord has risen. It’s time to gather,” Tobiassen said. “Their playing expands the worship space. If you can hear a horn, you’re in church.”

Other Easter service traditions

Some Christian faith groups hold an Easter vigil between sunset Saturday and sunrise Sunday, which can include a renewal of believers’ baptismal vows. In some instances, Easter vigils and Easter sunrise services are one and the same.

The Episcopal Church also calls Easter vigil the “Great Vigil.” In its tradition, the service includes a four-part liturgy that the church describes as recovering “the ancient practice of keeping the Easter feast.”

It’s explained further on the church’s website: “Believers would gather in the hours of darkness ending at dawn on Easter to hear scripture and offer prayer. This night-long service of prayerful watching anticipated the baptisms that would come at first light and the Easter Eucharist. Easter was the primary baptismal occasion for the early church to the practical exclusion of all others. This practice linked the meanings of Christ’s dying and rising to the understanding of baptism.”

With inputs from The Associated Press