The long-running Easter sunrise service atop Riverside’s Mt. Rubidoux will be held via livestream for the second year in a row due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s not canceled and it’s never been canceled,” said the Rev. Brenda J. Wood, who sits on the committee that stages the event. “It’s just different.”
A group of local pastors will still celebrate the service April 4 at Mt. Rubidoux, but attendees are encouraged to watch online rather than show up in person. The mountain is a city park and remains open, but the committee wasn’t able to get a special events permit to hold the service in front of a wider audience due to coronavirus restrictions, Wood said.
Christians have been hiking to the top of the 1,337-foot granite hill to worship on Easter morning since 1909. Before 2020, the service was interrupted just twice in its 112-year history: In the 1920s during an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease, and again during World War II, according to the Riverside Press-Enterprise.
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