In most of the world (apparently with the notable exclusion of US) Easter Monday is one of the big holy days. (According to this wikipedia article it’s a holiday in 112 countries worldwide.)
While I understand that today the main reason of having it off, is that it gives a nice long weekend, I’d still like to know if there’s any religious story behind.
Jesus supposedly died on the Good Friday, and was resurrected on the third day. Assuming an inclusive couting of days, that means that he woke up on the Sunday - In fact, the sole reason that Christians honour the Sunday, I’ve been led to believe.
But, what happend on the next day?
Even the normally verbose Catholic encyclopedia is rather quiet on the subject.
I learnt it at school in UK as Monday was the day of resurection. Jesus died on Friday late in the day, so first day was fri evening to sat evening, 2nd sat-sun, 3rd sun-mon. So he rose on Monday. That was how it was explained to CofE children in UK, not sure what the full details of the explanation at an eclesiastical level would be though.
How does that compare with the Jewish way of counting the day as sunset to sunset? The way I think I understand it, Jesus dies at 3 PM Friday. Call that day one. Saturday starts around 3 or 4 hours later (I’m guessing here, any dopers living in that area wanna help a guy out what with latititude and Daylight Savings Time and all) at sundown. Call that day two. Sunday starts at sundown of Saturday. That makes day three.