I have been a priest in the Episcopal church since March of 1999. I was introduced to a new word by Epsicopalians, “low Sunday” years ago. Low Sunday is the Sunday after Easter. While it is not on the calendar, it is engraved in the heart of many people. It is a long standing tradition that you simply blow off the Sunday after Easter.
This year we had some 450 attend Easter services. This weekend we probably saw less than 200. That makes me sick. Easter is a fifty day celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It ends on Pentecost. We Christians struggle to make it last for a week.
My guess is that the liturgy on Easter is much better than the following Sundays and that the folks in the pew have low expectations which are justified by their experience. We are taught that each Sunday is a little Easter but you would never know it otherwise.
We have the same problem. I think part of it is that people are simply “churched out” after Easter (Pascha). The more observant members of the Church will have fasted through Great Lent (no meat fish wine oil or animal products including dairy) and attended many extra services including the Great Canon of St. Andrew and Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts. During Holy Week there are services, often many, every day of the week. Bride Groom Matins, Great Thursday Liturgy, The Service of the 12 Gospels, three different services on Great Friday and at least 2 more on Great Saturday. Then there is the Pascha Liturgy including Vespers and Matins which all run together. None of these services are less than an hour and some run three hours or more.
Our Easter service starts at 11 or so on Saturday and rarely ends much before 3AM on Sunday. Then we all go and have a giant meal and pig out on all the things we were (hopefully) not eating during Lent. During Bright Week (Easter Week) we are excused from the usual fasting on Wednesday and Friday.
After all of that, people are usually pretty wiped out and getting them back into church again next Sunday is tough. I’m not saying it’s right. But I do understand it.
I too was accustomed to the idea of “Low Sunday” for many years. In the Roman Catholic Church I’m edified by the relatively new observance of Divine Mercy Sunday on the first Sunday after Easter, with special significance added this year by the beatification of Pope John Paul II; it has all felt like a continuation of the joy of Easter.
My understanding is that the term “Low Sunday” refers to the fact that the Sunday following Easter was the last day of the “Easter Octave,” essentially an eight-day feast. The second Sunday was called “low” only to distinguish it from the previous “high” Sunday of the octave. But it was still considered an important day, not at all one to be blown off. I think that as these origins were forgotten, the term morphed into a joke about low attendance.
It’s true that people feel churched out; it doesn’t help attendance that a lot of clergy take a well-deserved break on Low Sunday, as do many choirs.