KARACHI: The Chris­tian community celebrated Easter Sunday with much joy and happiness. The celebrations in all the city’s churches began early, at midnight with a big Sunday mass.

While just two days ago, on Good Friday, there were no church bells or lighting of candles, for Easter there was a candlelight vigil at midnight. And there were also the bells ringing, calli­ng everyone to chur­ch, announcing that Christ has risen.

It was the celebration of new life. The priests at churches lit the big Easter candle with a cross on it, blessed it and then took it around the church for others who had brought their own candles for midnight mass to light them with it and spread the light. In the background, the Church choir sang sweet and happy hymns.

After the midnight mass, which went on till around 2.30am, there is the morning mass. It is attended by all those who might have missed the midnight mass. Everyone looks happy and fresh. Everyone wears new clothes that may have not been very prominent earlier at midnight. It is time to celebrate and rejoice.

Meanwhile, the city’s bakeries were selling Easter eggs. The eggs signify new life. Easter eggs that are sold at the bakeries are not the usual chicken eggs that you can boil, fry or prepare omelettes with. These are hollow eggs, bigger in size than usual eggs, stuffed with goodies.

Some have a hard marzipan shell and when you shake them you can tell that they have sweets inside. Some are made of chocolate. At the United Bakery in Saddar this year, they had Easter eggs of all flavours. The ones wrapped in golden foil were chocolate, while the ones in red, blue and green foil were strawberry, vanilla and mint. The chocolate ones got sold out first.

Children also prepare their own Easter eggs at home by painting and decorating egg shells. There are also very expensive Easter eggs sold abroad that are studded with precious stones and used as jewellery boxes as well as eggs that are themselves the jewels and passed on through generations as precious heirlooms.

Another fun character seen around this time is the Easter Bunny. The smiling Easter Bunny is usually carrying a load of Easter eggs in its basket. The bunny is an Easter symbol because it represents fertility, springtime and hence new life.

Published in Dawn, April 10th, 2023