Today (Thursday) is such a nice day! It’s a nice a feeling when you don’t have to run back indoors after a few minutes of staying outside. I’m actually utilizing a bench, sitting outside to write my blog post. The breeze is blowing my hair softly while the sun warms my back. As I am writing this, I’m unsure what to write, what to talk about. I survey my surroundings. Watching people stroll by past the gardens with a destination in mind, whether a class or back at home. Anyways, I realized this weekend is Easter! Sadly, I can’t go home as I live all the way in Rhode Island, but I hope that everyone who does go home have a good Easter with their family.
Anyways how does Easter, if you are religious the resurrection of Jesus Christ, conjure up the Easter symbol of colored eggs and long-eared Easter bunnies. Perhaps it is because it is an ancient Pagan symbol of fertility and new life because the Pagan goddess of fertility or Eostre’s animal symbol is the bunny. Supposedly, the Easter bunny immigrated to America in the minds of the German immigrants in 1700s. This “Osterhare” laid colored eggs for children on Easter Sunday. The children just had to make nests for the hare to lay in. Children also left out carrots in case the bunny was hungry….Souunds like Santa Claus…rewarding them with their favorite foods. On a slightly unrelated note, why does Santa Claus get cookies..aren’t there more festive foods that he’d like. Back to Easter, this German tradition spread and influenced America. Now, Easter has substituted eggs for chocolate, candy, and stuffed bunnies, and other gifts. It’s not entirely forgotten…I hope! I still remember dying eggs as a child. Do children these days still do that?!
These Easter eggs are apparently linked to a Pagan tradition in that eggs meant new life, and the Pagans celebrated a spring festival. Also, the tradition to decorate eggs came from the ban to eat eggs during lent. People decorated and painted eggs so that they can eat them as a celebration of the end of lent when Easter came. Interestingly, people took decorating eggs so seriously that they even sold jewel-encrusted eggs during the 19th century.
Last interesting fact, not every country sees the bunny as the symbol for Easter, some other countries see animals like the fox or the cuckoo bird to be its symbol for Easter.
http://www.history.com/topics/holidays/easter-symbols
http://time.com/3767518/easter-bunny-origins-history/
I was born and raised in China and I basically know nothing about Easter. Thanks for sharing these interesting facts about Easter. Happy Easter!!!
My family is Russian Orthodox, and we do eggs, but there’s a tradition of making the ethnic pysanky, which are eggs died multiple times using beeswax to choose certain colors in certain places, which lets you make really ornate designs. It’s a pretty big custom still, and a lot of fun! Eggs in general have a lot of symbolism around Easter time, so this blog was really interesting!