Why do we eat chocolate on Easter? (and other fun Easter celebrations you might not know)
Easter marks the start of Spring and the festival itself is filled with plenty of ancient traditions. From January onwards, you’ll probably have seen the first signs of Easter sneaking onto supermarket shelves. Colourful arrays of foiled Easter eggs and cute bunnies adding a little ray of sunshine in the gloomy winter months, but why do we eat chocolate at Easter? And who is the Easter bunny? Marking the end of Lent, Easter is the culmination of a six week period observed by Christians. Traditionally Lent was six weeks of abstention from all animal products, which included dairy and eggs. In modern times, people have taken Lent upon themselves and abstained from eating sweets and chocolates over the six week period, making this an accessible way for all ages to be involved in Lent. Some people opt for another food or food group that is meaningful to them instead for Lent. Many years ago when people observed
Lent by giving up animal products, their chickens would continue to lay eggs during that time and because eggs were not consumed during Lent, people would decorate the eggs and keep them for Easter, giving way to the tradition for elaborate egg designs and egg decorating as a part of Easter traditions. Eggs are also ancient symbol of life, birth and fertility as well as the coming of Spring as a season. As such, it was then adopted by many across the world of all different backgrounds and countries as a way of representing life. The Easter Bunny is symbolic of reproductive prowess. Easter, of course, marks Jesus’ resurrection and the hard shell of an egg is said to reflect the tomb in which Jesus was buried. The idea of chicks appearing and cracking through the hard shell is also meant to be symbolic of Jesus who beat death to be resurrected on Easter. Eggs have always been an important part of the Easter celebrations (both the chocolate and chicken laid variety). For
poorer people, during the time of lent, abstaining from egg consumption was very difficult, so come Easter, there was much merriment as Lent came to an end. Eggs were a key gift over this time and were given to the church as offerings on Good Friday and often to the Lord of Manor at Easter. But the joy isn’t just in the giving and receiving of eggs. The Easter egg hunt has become a key fixture for many of those that celebrate. But where does the tradition of Easter egg hunts come from? This fun idea comes from Germany and actually harks back to the late 16th Century. A man called Martin Luther who was a Protestant Reformer organised an egg hunt for the members of his congregation as a way of marking the end of Lent. It was tradition for the men to hide the eggs and the women and children to find them as it was the women who discovered Jesus’ empty tomb at the time of the resurrection. And it seems that the Germans were big on creating
