Happy Easter!

Though it is the day after Easter, we wish you a Happy Easter! Our day was spent with family and was very special. We attended the 9:00 am Mass, the egg hunt after, then had a lovely day at Deirdre's house. Easter dinner was superb and the family time was very nice.

Mike read through the bulletin as we ate our dinner last night, and found that it had all kinds of interesting information about Easter. We were both excited to share what we learned! Here goes:

Eggs
The egg is a universal symbol of fertility and its rituals -- used to mark the coming of new life - date back to ancient Egypt and Persia. Christians adopted this familiar symbol as a sign of new life at Easter.

In Germany people dye eggs green (the color of new life) on Holy Thursday. Germans also hang dyed and decorated eggs on tree branches to celebrate the Easter season, like Christmas trees with ornaments.

The Greeks use red to decorate their eggs, symbolizing the blood of Jesus Christ. These are used to make Easter bread, given to friends and family on Easter Sunday.

In Bulgaria, people crack their brightly colored eggs during Easter as a sign of luck. The first egg is cracked on the wall of the church after the Easter Vigil. This is the first food to break the paschal fast.

Bunnies
Easter Baskets are filled with chocolate bunnies. The rabbit has been a symbol of new life since before Christianity. Some say the ancients celebrated a festival every spring to worship the goddess Eastre, who took on the earthy guise of a rabbit. Perhaps Christians adopted some aspects of that festival, or perhaps the rabbit was, likethe egg, a universal symbol of fertility.

The American tradition of the chocolate Easter bunny comes from the Germans, who brought their custom of candy rabbits with them to the New World. (The first German candy rabbits were made of pastry and sugar, not chocolate.)

Australians have a problem with rabbits. They consider them pests because they destroy crops. So the Australians rely on the Easter Bilby to deliver their Easter eggs. The bilby is native to Australia and looks a little like a bunny. Photo credit and copyright for bilby here.



Now, I don't personally think the bilby looks a thing like a rabbit; it looks like a mouse that Mattie might deliver to our doorstep. But I'm glad the Australians have a symbol :)