Something unusual must have happened if a video on the Internet portal YouTube reaches a million views within three days. The Passau Bishop Stefan Oster achieved this by telling a joke at Easter mass. This not only caused hilarity among the believers in Passau Cathedral. He also had to laugh heartily several times at the old joke from the Bavarian Forest. Its punch line won’t be revealed here, because hundreds of enthusiastic comments show that watching the video is worth it: “My atheist husband couldn’t believe it,” you can read, and another non-religious person remarked: “After this sermon, I think about it to convert to Christianity.”
The fact that Easter likes to tell a joke at Easter is due to a church tradition. Bishops often give the impression that they go into the basement to laugh. The actor Günter Maria Halmer once described how overwhelming the seriousness of faith once was, using the example of his grandmother. “Well Büble, can you pray yet?” That was her first question to him. Having fun in life was not part of her world, Halmer said. “Life has to hurt, otherwise it’s not right,” was the credo.
For a long time it was a dogma that laughter comes from the devil. In Umberto Eco’s novel “The Name of the Rose”, laughter is described as a devilish wind that deforms the face, makes men look like monkeys and weakens the fear of God. No wonder a bride in ancient Bavaria wasn’t allowed to laugh during her wedding. Laughing bride – crying woman, that was the perspective of that time.
Nevertheless, at some point Easter laughter (risus paschalis), which was also practiced by Bishop Oster, had become established. It experienced ups and downs. For a while the Easter resurrection was celebrated joyfully, until the zealots suppressed this joy again. Now the custom is flourishing again, although some pastors claim that an Easter joke is more difficult to recite than the Easter sermon. If the believers don’t laugh, then it isn’t funny for the preacher either. But if they laugh loudly like the community in Passau, then the old saying is fulfilled in a divine way: Laugh yourself sick so that you stay healthy.