What’s the background on Christian Science and Easter observances?

We are sometimes asked about the history of Article XVII, Section 2, in the Manual of The Mother Church by Mary Baker Eddy:

Easter Observances. Sect. 2. In the United States there shall be no special observances, festivities, nor gifts at the Easter season by members of The Mother Church. Gratitude and love should abide in every heart each day of all the years. Those sacred words of our beloved Master, “Let the dead bury their dead,” and “Follow thou me,” appeal to daily Christian endeavors for the living whereby to exemplify our risen Lord.¹ 

Eddy first indicated she was thinking about a Manual By-Law regarding Easter observances in 1904, when the holiday fell on Sunday, April 3. Around that time she received many letters and gifts in celebration of the holiday. 

For example, four letters to her mentioning Easter were published in the April 9, 1904, Christian Science Sentinel. One of the more significant gifts she had received was $10,000 (the equivalent of about $345,000 in 2024), which six Christian Science churches in Chicago had sent to support the building of First Church of Christ, Scientist, Concord, New Hampshire, where she lived at the time. Eddy thanked those churches in a letter published in the April 16, 1904, Sentinel. (The article makes clear that the gift may or may not have been intended as an Easter gift; it just happened to arrive on Easter.)

On April 8 she had written a letter of thanks to Rachel F. Marshall for another gift, mentioning a new Manual By-Law:

For your Easter greeting and giving what shall I write? This, that I am your debtor and bankrupt in thanks. I can never repay you in words for the amount of love in exquisite tokens that I received from you. The golden egg the lovely collars the beautiful everythings that you sent made me mute. I could only think thanks and be still….

 

I had too much worldly goods for my spiritual gain this dear Easter, so I shall fence with a defensive By-law my play ground for next Easter and pray for more grace and love divine[.]² 

Eddy sent the By-Law “Easter Observances” to the Christian Science Board of Directors later that month, on April 26.³ It was first printed in the April 30, 1904, Sentinel and published later that year in the Manual’s 41st edition. The wording has never changed. We did not find specific statements by Eddy that explain the By-Law in any further detail.

Interestingly, the editor of The Christian Science Journal, Archibald McLellan, had also published an editorial that same month, in its April issue, discussing Easter observances and festivities. He noted that for Christian Scientists the holiday had a deeper meaning.⁴ 

However, Eddy had been concerned about Easter celebrations long before 1904. Almost a decade earlier, on April 8, 1895—fresh from her first visit to the newly completed Original Edifice of The Mother Church—she had written this to Edward P. and Caroline S. Bates, two of her Christian Science students in Boston: 

Will you tell the students they must not expect me at Easter Sunday Service. I have to see to my house, all the carpets and furniture must be protected from the painters that are coming. Besides I am not fond of Holiday services, that is, the ceremonials of set days to worship God etc. But “suffer it to be so now” said our Master. 

 

Hope dear ones that the God of the living will be with you I wish you all happiness on Easter….⁵