How Easter and Passover are going digital during the coronavirus outbreak

While many are modifying their family rituals for the springtime holidays Easter and Passover as the coronavirus pandemic spreads, it’s even more imperative this year that big religious institutions overhaul tradition.

From communal Jewish Passover seders (that’s the ceremonial meal to kick off the eight-day holiday) to Good Friday mass to Easter Sunday activities, coronavirus fears and social distancing requirements mean any large celebration better happen online. 

Churches, synagogues, and religious groups are getting creative. Especially since the pressure to maintain social distance is on, most notably after coronavirus infections were traced back to religious gatherings in South Korea and in Sacramento County in California. 

For the Jewish community, the first two nights of Passover are traditionally when seders take place. The first was Wednesday night with the second round on Thursday. Synagogues added Zoom, Google Hangouts, and other videoconferencing platforms to the spring festival, which recognizes the Jewish people’s escape from Egypt. The Jewish Council for Public Affairs shared a lengthy list of all-digital Passover events around the country for the start of the holiday. The Jewish Reform movement offered a guide on “How to Hold a Passover Seder in the Year of Coronavirus.“

Easter is also a multi-day holiday with Holy Week, Good Friday and, of course, Easter Sunday. Virtual and modified Easter celebrations are popping up online and offline. Snapchat’s augmented reality egg hunt is expected to return this year to provide an indoor, socially distant option with digital Easter baskets and dyed eggs “scattered” around your house through the messaging app. One church built a Minecraft-like video game to substitute as an egg hunt. 

Some churches are offering drive-by confession. Drive-in movie theaters are becoming impromptu spaces for churchgoers to attend services from their cars. Easter care packages include egg hunts to-go complete with a basket of colorful eggs and treats to set everything up yourself. Good Friday mass was livestreamed from empty churches around the world.

The San Francisco Interfaith Council made a webpage of all the city’s livestreamed religious events, with more than 60 options from different synagogues, churches, and places of worship from just one city. 

Even if it’s a strange way to celebrate, the hyper-connectivity for the holidays this year means we can all enjoy an Easter Andrea Bocelli concert, live from Milan’s (now empty) Duomo Cathedral. That’s a world-class opera performance, for free, straight to your living room on Easter Sunday, April 12, at 1 p.m. EDT.