The biggest excuse of the year to eat chocolate is almost here!
Easter for 2018 will be celebrated on Sunday, April 1, with the preceding Friday and Saturday (and in many countries the Monday following) collectively forming the Easter holiday period.
It is a time when many families come together for an elaborate Easter dinner, and spend the weekend enjoying sweets, baked goods and, of course, eggs! Whether they be hard boiled and dyed, plastic and filled with candy or (my personal favorite) made completely from delicious chocolate, eggs are a traditional symbol of new life and synonymous with the Easter holiday period.
Easter is one of the most important (if not the most important) holiday on the Christian calendar. It celebrates the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and is composed of a series of significant days:
The week leading up to Easter Sunday is referred to by Christians as 'Holy Week'. This always begins with Palm Sunday, a day which gains its name from crowds of people waving palm branches upon Jesus' entry to Jerusalem.
Perhaps the most symbolic representation of Easter for young children takes the form a fluffy little animal with droopy ears. The Easter Bunny (or Easter Bilby for any fellow Aussies out there) has become a popular children's character, and is used as the design of many a chocolate treat. Rabbits are also a powerful symbol of fertility and new life and, therefore, of Easter.
Another (slightly less sweet) delicacy associated with Easter are hot cross buns, which throughout the centuries have been made and eaten every Good Friday. Not only meant to symbolize the cross, it was also thought that hot cross buns had miraculous curative powers! People would hang them from their kitchen ceilings to protect their households from evil for the year to come, and even used them in powdered form to treat all sorts of illnesses. Easter medicine!
So whether Easter be a more socially or more religiously oriented holiday for you (or simply an excuse to eat a year's supply of chocolate in one weekend), be sure to have an egg-cellent time during one of the most symbolic occasions of the year.
Written by Steve Connors
steve@beyondbeanie.org
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