Origins, meanings & practices of Easter
Lots of people today associate Easter with a deluge of chocolate eggs rather than the resurrection of Jesus Christ and many other religious festivals and customs. A sign maybe that religion plays a lesser part in some of our lives than once was or simply that the chocolate manufacturers and retailers have more advertising spend and see this as an opportunity to make sales over the Easter period with chocolate Easter eggs and gifts, which over time has become the trend. A combination of these and a host of other factors from the way we eat to the way we live generally has determined the chocolate fest that is now Easter.
The chocolate Easter egg is a relatively new tradition the origin of the Easter egg, and many more modern day Easter symbols, such as the Easter bunny, goes back a very long way and pre-date Christianity. The historical intermingling of pagan, Christian and Jewish beliefs and practices has left its legacy in many of the things we maybe take for granted about Easter and its traditions today.
The equinox occurs each year on March 20, 21 or 22. Both pagans and Christians continue to celebrate religious rituals linked to the equinox in the present day. wiccans hold their celebrations on the day or eve of the equinox. Western Christians wait until the Sunday on or after the next full moon. The Eastern Orthodox churches follow a different calculation; their celebration is often many weeks after the date selected by the Western churches.
A HISTORY OF EASTER and the EASTER EGG
Delve into the history and origins of the Christian festival of Easter and you come up with a few surprises. For instance, Easter eggs do not owe their origins to Christianity and originally the festival of Easter itself and the giving of Easter gifts had nothing to do with Christianity either. A closer look at the history of both Easter and the Easter egg reveals a much earlier association with pagan ritual and in particular, the pagan rites of spring, dating back into pre history.
For us, the ancient rites celebrating the Spring Equinox are most obviously associated with the mysterious Druids and places like Stone Henge, but most ancient races around the world had similar spring festivals to celebrate the rebirth of the year. The Egg, as a symbol of fertility and re-birth, has been associated with these rites from the earliest times.
The Christian Festival of Easter
In fact, the festival of Easter is a classic example of the early Christian church adapting an existing pagan ritual to suit their own purposes. The Saxon spring festival of Eostre, was named for their goddess of dawn, and when they came to Britain in about the 5th century AD, the festival came with them along with re-birth and fertility rituals involving eggs, chicks and rabbits. When the Saxons converted to Christianity and started to celebrate the death and the resurrection of Christ, it coincided with Eostre, so that's what the early church in Britain called the celebration, Eostre or Easter in modern English.
The actual date that Easter falls on every year is governed by a fairly complex calculation related to the Spring Equinox. The actual formula is: The first Sunday after the first full moon following the Spring Equinox is Easter Sunday or Easter Day. This formula was set by Egyptian astronomers in Alexandra in 235ad, and calculated using the same method as the Jews have traditionally used to calculate the feast of the Passover, which occurred at about the same time as the crucifixion.
Early Easter Eggs
As well as adopting the festival of Eostre, the Egg, representing fertility and re-birth in pagan times, was also adopted as part of the Christian Easter festival and it came to represent the 'resurrection' or re-birth of Christ after the crucifixion and some believe it is a symbol of the stone blocking the Sepulchre being 'rolled' away.
In the UK and Europe, the earliest Easter eggs were painted and decorated hen, duck or goose eggs, a practice still carried on in parts of the world today. As time went by, artificial eggs were made and by the end of the 17th century, manufactured eggs made of various materials were available for purchase at Easter, for giving as Easter gifts and presents.
Easter eggs continued to evolve through the 18th and into the 19th Century, with hollow cardboard eggs filled with Easter gifts and sumptuously decorated, culminating with the fabulous Faberge Eggs. Encrusted with jewels, they were made for the Czar's of Russia by Carl Faberge, a French jeweller. Surely these were the 'ultimate' Easter gift, to buy even a small one now would make you poorer by several millions of pounds sterling.
The Chocolate Easter Egg
It was at about this time (early 1800's) that the first chocolate Easter egg appeared in Germany (who also invented the advent calendar) and France and soon spread to the rest of Europe and beyond. The first chocolate eggs were solid soon followed by hollow eggs. Although making hollow eggs at that time was no mean feat, because the easily worked chocolate we use today didn't exist then, they had to use a paste made from ground roasted Cacao beans.
By the turn of the 19th Century, the discovery of the modern chocolate making process and improved mass manufacturing methods meant that the Chocolate Easter Egg was fast becoming the Easter Gift of choice in the UK and parts of Europe, and by the 1960's it was well established worldwide.
The meaning of the many different customs observed during Easter Sunday have been buried with time. Their origins lie in both pre-Christian religions and Christianity. In one way or another all the customs are a "salute to spring" marking re-birth.
The white Easter lily has come to capture the glory of the holiday. The word "Easter" is named after Eastre, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring. A festival was held in her honour every year at the vernal equinox.
People celebrate Easter according to their beliefs and their religious denominations. Christians commemorate Good Friday as the day that Jesus Christ died and Easter Sunday as the day that He was resurrected. Protestant settlers brought the custom of a sunrise service, a religious gathering at dawn, to the United States.
Who is the Easter Bunny?
Today on Easter Sunday, many children wake up to find that the Easter Bunny has left them baskets of candy.
He has also hidden the eggs that they decorated earlier that week. Children hunt for the eggs all around the house. Neighbourhoods and organizations hold Easter egg hunts, and the child who finds the most eggs wins a prize.
The Easter Bunny is a rabbit-spirit. Long ago, he was called the "Easter Hare", hares and rabbits have frequent multiple births so they became a symbol of fertility. The custom of an Easter egg hunt began because children believed that hares laid eggs in the grass. The Romans believed that "All life comes from an egg." Christians consider eggs to be "the seed of life" and so they are symbolic of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Why we dye, or colour, and decorate eggs is not certain. In ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome and Persia eggs were dyed for spring festivals. In medieval Europe, beautifully decorated eggs were given as gifts.
Easter Egg Games
Some people are not content with simply making themselves ill from all the over-indulgence related to consuming Easter eggs. Instead, prior to consumption, they may engage in the following activities:
Egg Rolling
Eggs are personalised so that they are distinct from on another and thus recognisable. A competition then takes place between people with eggs as to how far they can roll them. This most often takes place on a hill or lawn, but can be carried out anywhere with enough space. The winner of the game is the person who rolls the egg the furthest without breaking it.
Egg Throwing Mark I
Engaged in by those with a particularly deft throwing style, egg throwing has a similar objective as egg rolling, requiring the participant to launch their ovoid skywards in the attempt to reach the furthest distance without breaking. Given the natural fragility of eggs when faced with the impact of something hard the winner of such a contest more often achieves the distance by fluke than by design.
Egg Throwing Mark II
More often engaged in by those of an adolescent nature around Eastertide, egg throwing follows a simple procedure. Firstly select a number of eggs, then select an appropriate target. Finally throw the eggs at the target. This works best if said target is either inanimate, or someone the egg-thrower knows and can laugh at.
Egg Hunts
The Eggs are usually hidden either on the evening before Easter or on Easter Sunday itself by the Easter Bunny. The eggs could be hidden in a number of places though the most popular seem to be around the house, in gardens or in some public place such as a park. Children are then released to go hunting for the eggs. In some versions of the game they get to keep as many as they find whilst others emphasise fairness and have the total eggs split up between the participants. The eggs are then consumed as messily as possible.