HAPPY EASTER

    Hey folks a little story on how we celebrated Easter when I was a kid, how I celebrate it now...and a wee bit of some history that I could fInd.

So the story goes Easter was a Pagan celebration called Eastre...celebrating the coming of spring, new life.
It was also celebrated by the Ancient Saxons as a great festival commemorating their goddess of offsrping and of springtime, Eastre. 

It also became Christian, when the second century missionaries encountered pagan's having theses spring celebrations...they then tried to convert the pagans to Christianity in a some what secret manner.  The missionaries tried to secretly spread thier religious beliefs slowly throughout the pagan world by continuing to celebrate pagan feasts, but to do it in a christian manner.

As luck would have it, the pagan festival of Eastre occured at the same time the Christian observance of the resurrection of Christ...oh what a great day.  So it made sense to the missionaries to alter the festival itself some to attempt to make it a more christain celebration to slowly win the pagans over.  The early name, Eastre, was slowly changed to the more modern spelling Easter.

The date of Easter prior to 325ad, as been celebrated during the spring Equinox.  In that year it was convened by the emperor Constantine...which states "Easter Rule"...Easter shall be celebrated on the first Sunday that occurs after the first full moon on of after the vernal equinox. Yikes!...hence anywhere from March 21 to April 25th...go figure.

THE EASTER BUNNY. ..
It is not a modern invention...it came with the pagan festival of Eastre.  The goddess, Eastre was worshiped by the Anglo-Saxons through her early symbol, the rabbit. (grin).

THE EASTER EGG.

As with the bunny, it pre-dates the holiday itself.  The exchange of eggs in spring is a custom that was already centureis old when Easter was first celebrated by the christians.
From the earliest times, the egg was a symbol of re-birth in most cultures...Eggs were often wrapped in gold leaf (I want one of those ones), or if you were a pesant (ummm...that would have been me), then the eggs were colored brightly by boiling them with leaves or petals of certain flowers. (hmmm...I wonder which flowers)?

Okay now for Easter in my family.

I have a wee broken foot...I am hiding in the flower bush...

When I was a kid growing up on a farm in Acme, Alberta...I can remember boiling the eggs...and then Mom let us paint them.  It was a before bed thing that we all got to do.  I can still remember the egg coloring in the bowls just waiting for the eggs to be dipped.  WE also put different dried flowers or clover on the eggs...and stuck them on the egg with tacky clue, or we put different faces on them.  Coming from a small farming community family's got together and painted eggs...this community had Ukranians..Minnonites, different cultures all got together.  We drew pictures on the eggs with crayons and then dipped them in food coloring...twas quite a sight to behold with kids...we came up with all sorts of pictures on our eggs...but the Ukranian women could really draw a color some beautiful eggs.   Those type of eggs were hollow of course.  I can remember sticking holes in both ends of the egg with a needle then stick your mouth to the egg and blow out the centre...was lots of fun when I was a kid.  During the week before Easter...Mom would start the making of our Easter Bonnets  (horrors)..and out Easter dresses for church...that part I did not like...not the church, as after church we got to go on a easter egg hunt...but I did not like my bonnet..Mom stuck all sorts of flowers...and bows and stuff on the darn thing...and I was not one for wearing the proverbial dress either...much ranther run around in my jeans...and get into the mud (hahahahahah).  Sometimes we would have a treasure hunt...map included with picture clues (some of us could not read yet) as to where to find the much awaited treasure (the chocolate egg).   It was the time when family's got together discussed the planting of crops...the warming of the sun..the daffodils out in bloom...re-birth.  Calves and lambs in the fields...

Now I am still the same way..a big kid, in a city, I still hide eggs, go out with my friends and their kids and watch all the kids with their faces a lit up in excitement...looking for the prize...that darn egg.  Who came first anyways..the chicken, the bunny, or the egg!!!!!

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE, WHERE EVER YOU ARE..HOW EVER YOU CELEBRATE....HAPPY SPRING...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!