h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

when did the easter bunny and easter eggs come into the picture? isnt it the day when jesus resirected or something

No its an ancient spring festival which was hijacked by the christians cos they couldn't tollerate anything they didn't control.

Bit like Christmas.

Easter is the biggest festival of the Christian year, celebrating the death and resurrection of Christ. It happens at this time of year because that's the time of year when Christ supposedly died and rose again. Because the festival in England corresponded with an old pre-christian festival called Easter, the name Easter was used in English. It is called Pascha or some variation on it in most European languages.

The giving of eggs at Easter is an old custom, but I doubt that it extends back as far as pre-Christian times. In England this would be back to about the 5th century. I'd say it is more likely a Christian tradition, the eggs representing new life. Of course, the change to chocolate eggs is very recent. Even in my parents time, real eggs were used, not chocolate ones.

Not sure but eggs, and the original rolling of eggs down the hill, are in commemoration of the rolling away for the rock and Jesus's resurrection is it not? Or at least that's what I remember from sunday school (but I wasn't really paying attention)

Painting and giving of eggs and eventually chocolate eggs will just be how the traditions have developed...?

I no no...Just thought I'd sticky beak..

http://www.englishheathenism.homestead.com/eostre.html

The festival and all associated symbols (bunnies, eggs, names) were corrupted by the early christian church to make christianity more palatable.

Eostre has close lunar associations which is one reason the date of Easter is not fixed (odd when every other chrisitian festival is).

Easter bunny = march hare

Easter is not fixed because it is tied to the Jewish festival of Passover, which is timed from the lunar cycles. Eventually, at the council of Nicaea, a formula for the setting of the date of Easter was devised. This was all done before Christianity ever got to England or anybody had heard of "Eostre" the pagan festival.

It is fashionable nowadays to say that the pagan celebration was hijacked, but this really isn't the case.

Okay so the timing is of christian origin, but the name and symbology are derived from the pagan festival of Ostara, a feast of the goddess Eostre, a fertility goddess. The hare and the egg were two of here symbols. It would be a coincidence of a high order if this also came out of the council of Nicea.

A307487 - The Council of Nicea

Okay so the timing is of christian origin, but the name and symbology are derived from the pagan festival of Ostara, a feast of the goddess Eostre, a fertility goddess. The hare and the egg were two of her symbols. It would be a coincidence of a high order if this also came out of the council of Nicea.

A307487 - The Council of Nicea

There's only one reference to Eostre in the world's literature and that's by the Venerable Bede. All he said was that the heathen English used to worship a goddess called Eostre in March, so that is probably where the word Easter came from.

I don't know how you worked out from that that the hare and the egg were her symbols.

We have eggs because of the celebration of new life. We have chocolate because it's brown, and brown is the colour of wood - Jesus died on a wooden cross so we have Easter Eggs.

Liam.

I always thought the Easter Bunny was invented by the Americans. The first time I ever heard of him, it was as one of those strange things they do in America. That was back in the late 1960s.

We have easter eggs because they're easier to hide and carry than easter anvils.

I thought it was because Jesus was actually a duck, or am I thinking of someone else?

I asked my father about this. He is nearly 80. He said that you give people Easter Eggs so that they can roll them down hills.

Could it be because confectioners make a huge pile of money out of producing a very expensive form of ?

Thorntons Sunday?

An Egg also symbolises the breaking out of entombment as with the resurrection so there is more to the new life aspect of their approprateness.

Also the availablity of eggs to all even the poor meant that all the children could have something to do on Easter Monday whether it was a cheap quaill egg or an expensive duck egg.

Want to start a Cynics sub-group with me Mallory!

I'm sure that the Easter bunny & chocolate eggs, though based on various historic rites, actually became a modern custom via an American cartoon of bunnies making chocolate eggs. I've seen the cartoon, it's one of those really twee ones.

I have to say the easter Bunny always confused me when I moved to England. I'm sure it's put back a lot of kids' understanding of biology back (can you say mammal?). In France we have an Easter chicken which gives out the Easter Eggs which I always thought made a lot more sense.