Easter Traditions New and Old

There are millions of people in this world who celebrate Easter every year. This is actually one of the major Christian festivals in this world which is enthusiastically celebrated everywhere. The Easter celebrations include the Easter egg, the Easter basket, Personalized letter from the Easter Bunny and the Easter games. The basic idea of the Easter festival is to have fun with your loved ones and welcome the spring season after the cold winter. However, have you ever wondered why these traditions associated with the Easter are and exactly is the connection of eggs, Bunny and the basket with Jesus? Also, have you ever wondered why exactly the date of this festival tends to vary widely? Well, for finding answers to these questions please do keep reading.

Before 325 A.D, people celebrated Easter on different days in a year. However, Emperor Constantine put forth different Christian issues in front of Council of Nicaea and one of those issues was to fix a date for the Easter celebrations. Therefore, it was decided that Easter should be celebrated on the first Sunday after first full moon which falls after spring equinox. This is the reason why Easter falls in between March 22 and the April 25. Easter was first known as Eastre which was basically celebrated by Germans. It was celebrated for the goddess of springtime and fertility known as Oestre or Eostre. Among many Christian denominations like Catholics, Easter is considered as the last day of the festival of Lent. Christians are supposed to fast and make other kind of sacrifices during the 46 days of Lent. The day before the fasting period is called as Mardi gras and also as fat Tuesday.

The Easter Bunny is one of the oldest traditions of Easter which was followed since the ancient pagan religions. Easter is the time when winter comes to an end and the spring season begins. Therefore, it is a time when new plants grow from the mother earth and therefore symbolizes fresh and new life. Therefore, this day was an occasion to pay tribute to the fertility goddesses and that the rabbit or hare is thought as the manifestation of fertility. The tradition of the Easter Bunny was brought by the Germans to America but it was not incorporated in the Easter traditions until the Civil War. Nowadays most people put the chocolate bunny into the Easter baskets along with the Letters from the Easter Bunny himself - especially for children. The reality is that the Easter Bunny has become almost as popular as Santa Claus – thus, letters from the Easter Bunny are treasured keepsakes for kids.

The Easter egg symbolizes rebirth all through the history of mankind and also in the mythological traditions. Even in the ancient cultures people exchanged colored eggs a long time before this practice was employed in the modern celebrations of this festival. In the olden times and nests were used instead of Easter baskets and the Dutch children especially for this tradition of filling the bonnets and caps with grass and placing them out overnight. If the offerings were good enough, brightly colored eggs were left in the nest by the fertility goddess. This tradition was adopted and changed into the Easter basket filled with the fake grass later on. I hope you have understood the Easter traditions old and new and their origins.