Easter Traditions

In this episode, "Easter Traditions'" . . .

Will you join the children in scouring their yards on Easter Sunday for plastic eggs and filling baskets with chocolate bunnies? Have you ever wondered why we do such strange things? According to an article in the online newsletter Mental Floss by Stacey Conradt, Pagan rituals and old superstitions mostly. Here are some of the reasons behind a few of our Easter traditions.

1. Dyeing Easter Eggs

The tradition of decorating eggs may go back to the ancient pagans. It's easy to see why eggs represent rebirth and life, so associating them with spring and new growth isn't much stretch. To celebrate the new season, it's said that people colored eggs and gave them to friends and family as gifts.

When Christians came along, they likely incorporated the tradition into their celebrations. According to some legends, Mary Magdalene could be responsible for our annual trek to the store to buy dye kits. As the story goes, Mary brought eggs with her to Jesus's crucifixion, and blood from his wounds fell on the eggs, coloring them red.

2. The Easter Bunny

At first glance, it's hard to imagine what a giant rabbit has to do with a religious holiday. But according to Time Magazine, the tradition again dates to the pagans. They celebrated a goddess of fertility named Eostre—and you may recall that fertility is a trait rabbits are most famous for. It's thought that German immigrants brought their tradition of an egg-laying hare called Osterhase to the U.S. in the 1700s.

Oh, by the way, "What do you call a parade of rabbits hopping backward?"

"A receding hare-line." Ha, ha.

3. Hollow Chocolate Bunnies

Now that we know why Easter is associated with rabbits, chocolate bunnies make sense. But why are so many of them hollow inside? According to the R.M. Palmer Company, one of the oldest makers of chocolate bunnies in the U.S., the empty insides are just in consideration of your teeth. "If you had a larger-size bunny and it was solid chocolate, it would be like a brick; you'd be breaking teeth," Mark Schlott, executive vice-president of operations @Palmer Company told Smithsonian Magazine in 2010.

Of course, there's also the "wow" factor—candy makers can make an enormous, more impressive-looking bunny for a reasonable price if there's nothing inside it.

4. Easter Baskets

If you tilt your head and squint at an Easter basket, especially one stuffed with fake shredded grass, you might see its origins as a nest. Remember the German Osterhase tradition? Well, there was more to it. To encourage this mythical bunny to stop by their houses, children would fashion nests for it to come and lay its colored eggs. Over time the nests evolved into baskets.

5. Easter Fashion Parades

There's an old superstition that wearing new clothes on Easter means good luck for the rest of the year. It has something to do with rebirth and renewal, but mostly, it sounds like a made-up marketing excuse to go shopping.

Fancy new finery deserves to be seen for more than 60 minutes during Easter services. In the mid-1800s, worshippers in New York arranged themselves into a little post-church fashion show as they left their Fifth Avenue churches. The tradition continues today.

6. Sunrise Services

As the story goes, Mary opened Jesus's tomb at dawn on Easter morning to find it empty. In honor of that occasion, many churches hold services at sunrise so churchgoers can experience the event as it happened. The first one on record was held in 1732 in Saxony (now Germany) by a group of young men. The entire congregation attended the early-morning ceremony the following year, and soon, the sunrise service caught on across the country. By 1773, sunrise services had spread to the U.S.—the first was held in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

7. Easter Ham

Believe it or not, even that juicy ham on your dining room table dates to pagan rituals honoring spring and the goddess Eostre. According to Bruce Kraig, the tradition goes back to at least 6th-century Germany, the founder of the Culinary Historians of Chicago. Hunters often slaughtered hogs in the forest in the fall, then left them to cure all winter. The pork was one of the only meats ready to go for spring celebrations. As with other pagan rituals, Christianity adapted the tradition for its own needs as the religion spread.

Well, there you have it. So, get out, dawn your new spring outfit, have your sunrise service, meet with your friends, dye a few eggs, and enjoy your ham dinner. Oh, don't forget to look around for that chocolate bunny.

Happy Easter!

I'm Patrick Ball; thanks for listening; see you in the next episode.

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