With Kim on her way to England, I've been given the blog duty.....since today's Easter, I've decided to explain where some of those Easter traditions come from:
Some may be horrified to know that Easter began as a pagen festival. I say horrified because I know quite a few churches have banned Halloween due to it's pagen background, but they tend to overlook the fact that both Christmas and Easter were pagen festival time at some point.
The ancient Saxons celebrated the coming of Spring with a festival for the goddess of offspring and springtime - Eostre. This festival just happened to be at the same time of the Christian observance of Christ's resurrection; so they just kind of altered the festival and the holiday eventually took a more modern spelling - Easter.
The Easter Bunny is not an invention of modern times. It began with the pagen festival of Eastre - her earthly spirit was a rabbit.
It was the Germans who brought the Easter Bunny to America. Easter was not widely spread until after the Civil War.
The Easter Egg also predates the Christian Holiday. It was custom to exchange eggs in the springtime as the egg was a symbol of rebirth. They were often wrapped in gold leaves or colored by boiling them with certain flower petals.
And that's about all I could find on the internet......
But I'll leave you with my very favorite Easter Commercial:
Very cool information - I've had several friends asked this year how the Easter Bunny relates to Jesus dying on the cross by their kids... I don't think I ever wondered such things so long as the candy kept coming. Kids are so smart these days!
ReplyDeleteGreat info- We were just talking to Jenna about this today on the way home from church!! Our prays are with Kim traveling today and with Chris and his family during this time. Congrats to Aaron on being confirmed what a great day in his church life. Si, tracey Hanna and Jenna
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