Easter is the only major Christian holiday that doesn’t
have a set calendar date and, depending on how the lunar calendar corresponds
to the gregorian calendar in that year can be celebrated anytime between March
22 and April 25. The actual formula is The first Sunday after the first full
moon following the Spring Equinox is Easter Sunday.
On the Friday before Easter (Good Friday), Christians
believe that Jesus was crucified and that, after he had been nailed to the
cross, his body was buried in a guarded cave with a large boulder blocking the
entrance. The following Sunday (Easter Sunday) the grave site was visited by
devotees and was discovered empty so this is the day that he was resurrected.
The Season of Lent is typically considered to be the 40
days between Ash Wednesday and concludes at the end of Holy Saturday, with the
Easter Vigil. Lent is often characterized by abstention from certain kinds of
food. Lent's duration is actually 46 days. However, as Sundays represent
Christ's resurrection, they are not commonly counted in the days between Ash
Wednesday and Easter. Coming from the Anglo-Saxon Lencten, meaning “spring,”
and Lent was not started by the church like many believe as a forty-day abstinence
period was anciently observed in honor of the pagan gods Osiris, Adonis and
Tammuz and originated in the ancient Babylonian mystery religion. “The forty
days’ abstinence of Lent was directly borrowed from the worshippers of the
Babylonian goddess.
History of Easter Eggs and Easter Bunny and Hare.
The egg has long been a symbol of fertility and the
beginning and in Egyptian mythology, the phoenix burns its nest to be reborn
later from the egg that is left. The Easter Bunny is not a modern invention as
it originated with the pagan festival of Eastre. The goddess Eastre (sometimes
spelled Eostre) is associated with spring and fertility and was worshipped by
the Anglo Saxons through her earthly symbol, the rabbit. The Easter bunny has
its origin in pre-Christian fertility lore. The Hare and the Rabbit were the
most fertile animals known and they served as symbols of the new life during
the spring season. The inclusion of the hare into current Easter customs
appears to have originated in Germany, where tales were told of an Easter hare
who laid eggs for children to find.
Chocolate Easter eggs were first made in Europe in the
early 19th century in France and Germany. Early eggs were solid, as the ability
to produce a moulded chocolate egg had not been devised. The earliest Cadbury
chocolate eggs were made of dark chocolate with a plain smooth surface and were
filled with sugared almonds. The launch in 1905 of Cadbury's Dairy Milk
Chocolate transformed the Easter egg market due to the popularity of this new
chocolate and today the Easter egg market is predominantly milk chocolate.
Easter Island - The early settlers called the island
"Te Pito O Te Henua" (Navel of The World). Jacob Roggeveen, found the
island on Easter Day in 1722, named it Easter Island. Today, the land, people
and language are all referred to locally as Rapa Nui and the island is famous
for its 887 extant monumental statues.
easter holiday
