The celebrations and festivities surrounding this year’s religious spring holidays, which typically fall at the end of March or early April, will be different this year due to state-wide safety measures taken to prevent spread of the new coronavirus (COVID-19).

Easter

Easter will take place on Sunday, April 12. Other key dates for Christians in the week leading up to Easter include Holy Thursday and Good Friday.

A celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Easter is typically celebrated by attending church services and gathering for a family meal. Easter egg hunts, pictures with the Easter bunny, and egg decorating are other hallmark traditions of the holiday.

Although many cannot participate in these activities due to restrictions on social gatherings, several area churches are turning to remote technology to connect with regular, and new, church goers to observe longstanding religious traditions.

At the First Congregational Church in Deep River Reverend Timothy Haut said Easter “is one of our biggest services of the year. We usually have 300 people for Easter, but the interesting thing is that since we’ve been live streaming, we have people watching from all over the country…It’s really been kind of wonderful to see this blossoming response to live streaming.”

In addition to live streaming Easter services at 10 a.m. on April 12, Haut plans to stream a live Easter sunrise service, using the Facebook platform.

Reverend Joy Perkett of First Baptist Church in Essex has seen an increase in viewership of the live streaming videos that she has shared online since suspending in-person operations due to COVID-19.

“We’ve been getting a ton of new faces, people call in from all over,” said Perkett. “I know a lot of them, but they want to be a part of church. Our church service is now bigger than what it usually is.”

Although planning is still underway for Holy Week services, Perkett aims to make the online version similar to what individuals would experience in person. One example includes a tradition of hand washing for the church’s Maundy Thursday service.

“We can’t quite do that,” Perkett said. “But I might ask that you wash your partner’s hand or maybe you do that to your own hands.”

As for this Easter, Perkett compares it to the experience she has with the church’s annual sunrise service.

“Some years it’s so cold and we go and it’s cloudy, so you can’t quite see the sunrise yet, but you know it’s there,” Perkett said. “I’ve been thinking about that metaphor. We’re collectively waiting for something…that dawning, and I guess what I would say about Easter this year is, maybe it’s going to be [that] I don’t see the sun in that moment, but it’s there and the dawn breaks and we feel the warmth and the light.

“Maybe Easter’s going to be a little bit different this year, but I still hold out hope and faith that we get to celebrate together the beauty that is someone checking on a neighbor, the beauty that is 80 year-olds calling to worship on Zoom, the beauty that is our doctors…the beauty is still there, celebrating on us, that is what keeps shining on us.”

At Trinity Lutheran Church in Centerbrook, Reverend Brett Hertzog Betkoski plans to continue “doing what we have been doing since everything shut down,” he said.

During holy week, this includes connecting using the Zoom videoconferencing platform; posting sermons, devotionals, and podcasts to the church’s YouTube channel and Facebook; and live streaming from the church’s website.

Betkoski’s intention is to post “something sweet for Easter using stock footage [of] all the bands, all the great things we’ve done…The plan is to really have the best Easter we’ve ever had when we return, whether it’s six weeks from now…it’s going to be the best Easter.”

On a typical Easter Sunday at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Essex, a total of four services are offered, including a sunrise service by the Connecticut River. This year, it will be reduced to one live streaming service, potentially from an Episcopal cathedral in Hartford.

“It’s an Easter like we’ve never experienced before,” said Reverend Linda Spiers of St. John’s Episcopal Church, Essex.

The live streaming is an effort “to provide worship for our people who are yearning so much to be together in community and to worship at the holiest time of our Christian Church,” she said.

“It’s not the same as being in person, yet it allows people to worship at home with their families,” said Spiers. “Imagine how many people are doing this via technology.”

Passover

The Jewish holiday Passover starts on the evening of April 8 and will end on Thursday, April 16. A celebration of the Israelites exodus from Egypt as freed slaves, large family or community gatherings for a seder are customary.

At Congregation Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek in Chester, in-person seder gatherings, a special Women’s Seder on March 29, and a Congregational Passover Seder, scheduled for the second night of Passover, Thursday, April 9, were canceled.

“We keep hearing stories from congregationalists who are heartbroken, who can’t be with [others] and people who have hosted their seders at home for 40 years,” said Rabbi Marci Bellows.

The Passover Seder involves certain Jewish rituals including a retelling of the biblical story on the exodus from Egypt, special songs, symbolic foods placed on a Passover seder plate, the drinking of wine and eating a special bread, matzo.

Although families and community members of Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek cannot be together in person this year, the synagogue has decided to host a virtual seder, available to members on the videoconferencing platform Zoom.

“We are going to make it as interactive as possible,” said Bellows. “We will pass the Seder plate in front of us…we’ll each do it at home, we’ll sing the songs and invite people to sing with us.”

Bellows adds that the virtual seder will be a comfort to individuals who are home alone during the holiday and that the pandemic has offered an opportunity to reflect on how important personal contact is to our daily lives.

“I think this time has shown us how important it is to not take community for granted and how special holding someone’s hand is…giving a hug to a dear friend, looking into someone’s eyes, being able to be at a life cycle event [such as] someone’s wedding…the simple things that have been taken from us,” said Bellows. “The lesson here is don’t take the mundane everyday human to human moments for granted. Enjoy them, treasure them. They are a key part of being human.”