Happy Easter

The Easter Bunny has arrived at the Silverglate house.  All the kids are hyper with the influx of candy.  This year, the Easter Bunny apparently decided to cut back on the amount of candy in the baskets.  It did not go unnoticed by my youngest.  He is holding a little grudge now.  But even though I have one Easter "Scrooge" in the house, I thought it might be interesting to talk about the origins of some of Easter's secular traditions.


Eggs have always been plentiful during the holiday.  Catholics were not allowed to eat eggs during the 40 days of Lent, so they naturally celebrated Easter with as many eggs as possible.  The Greek Orthodox would often dye their eggs red in order to symbolize the blood of Jesus.

The Easter Bunny has been around a long time.  Due to the rabbit's ability to get pregnant a second time even while being pregnant with a first litter, it has come to represent fertility.  The rabbit has always been present in Spring Festivals.  But the official Easter Bunny that can now be thanked for the fact that my kids' faces are smeared with chocolate, is first seen in Germany in the 1500s.  There, a magical hare named Oschter Haws, would leave good children a nest of colored eggs.  By the 1700s, the Easter Bunny had moved to America.  Pennsylvania Dutch children would make nests out of their capes and bonnets hoping that if they were well behaved enough, the Easter Bunny would fill them.