Non-religious
Easter traditions
As
with many other Christian dates, the celebration of Easter
extends beyond the church. Since its origins, it has been
a time of celebration and feasting. Today it is commercially
important, seeing wide sales of greeting cards and confectionery
such as chocolate Easter eggs, marshmallow bunnies, Peeps,
and jelly beans.
In the United States, the Easter holiday
has been effectively secularized, so that many American
families participate only in the attendant revelry, central
to which is decorating Easter eggs on Saturday evening
and hunting for them Sunday morning, by which time they
have been mysteriously hidden all over the house and garden.
According to the children's stories, the eggs were hidden
overnight and other treats delivered by the Easter Bunny
in an Easter basket which children find waiting for them
when they wake up. (The Easter Bunny's motives for doing
this are seldom clarified.)
However,
these secular rituals often have origins in Christian
symbolism; the eggs, for example, can be taken as signs
of rebirth and resurrection. Some of Easter's symbols
can be traced back still further; some (such as the Easter
bunny, originally a hare) seem to have their origins in
earlier pagan rituals celebrating nature's springtime
rebirth; while others can be traced back to Jewish customs
(such as the lamb often eaten at Easter feasts, which
echoes Passover's paschal lamb). (Eggs can be related
to both pre-Christian traditions.)
In Norway,
in addition to skiing in the mountains and painting eggs
for decorating, it is tradition to solve murders at Easter.
All the major television channels show crime and detective
stories (such as Poirot), magazines print stories where
the readers can try to figure out who did it, and many
new books are published. Even the milk cartons change
to have murder stories on their sides.
In
the Czech Republic, a tradition of whipping is carried
out on Easter Monday. In the morning, males whip females
with a special handmade whip called pomlázka. The
pomlázka consists of eight, twelve or even twenty-four
withies (willow rods) and is usually from half a meter
to two meters long and decorated with coloured ribbons
at the end. It must be mentioned that while whipping can
be painful, the purpose is not to cause suffering. Rather,
the purpose is for males to exhibit their attraction to
females; unvisited females can even feel offended. The
whipped girl gives a coloured egg to the guy as a sign
of her thanks and forgiveness. A legend says that girls
should be whipped in order to keep their health during
whole next year. The females can get revenge in the afternoon
when they can pour a bucket of cold water on any male.
The habit slightly varies across the Czech Republic. Some
feminists allege it is a disgusting medieval tradition.
source:
From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Happy
Easter!!!
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