I invite my fellow Anglicans as well as my learned Orthodox friend
@The Liturgist to share their experiences, knowledge, and or reactions to the subject of this thread.
As you may recall, a couple of years ago I relocated resulting in a change from attending an Anglo-Catholic Episcopal parish with high churchmanship which was my entry point into Anglicanism. Now things are quite different. My new parish has lower churchmanship probably best defined as broad church and is decidedly not Anglo-Catholic. There has been much for me to adjust to, but especially now I'm curious about a local practice of celebrating the second Sunday of Easter as "Holy Humor Sunday." This is totally new to me, so I ask is this a thing, a local anomaly, a practice elsewhere in the church, a re-emerging trend, a historical practice lost in antiquity? I am trying to learn about it and sort out my own reactions to it as an admittedly rather stuffy high church Anglo-Catholic.
This explanation from Sunday's bulletin:
For centuries in Easter Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant countries, the week following Easter Sunday, including "Bright Sunday" (the second Sunday after Easter), was observed by the faithful as 'days of joy and laughter" with parties and picnics to celebrate Jesus' resurrection. Priests would deliberately include amusing stories and jokes in their sermon in an attempt to make the faithful laugh. Churchgoers and pastors played practical jokes on each other, drenched each other with water, told jokes, sang and danced. It was their way of celebrating the resurrection of Christ - the supreme joke God played on Satan by raising Jesus from the dead. Early church theologians (like Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, and John Chrysostom) mused that God played a practical joke on the devil by raising Jesus from the dead. "Risus Paschalis - The Easter Laugh," the early theologians called it. The observance of Risus Paschalis was officially outlawed by Pope Clement X in the 17th century. While it's unclear why the tradition faded in Orthodox & Protestant traditions, it has experienced a bit of a revival. In 1988, the Fellowship of Merry Christians began encouraging churches to resurrect this tradition to celebrate the grace and mercy of God through the gift of laughter and joy.
What is your experience, knowledge, and/or reaction? It is all new to me.