Wilson's Almanac on Easter (Ostara/Oestara)

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       Easter: not just chocolate eggs

The folklore of Easter
by Pip Wilson

 

 

Easter is probably for Christians the time of year with the greatest spiritual significance, and for the rest of the Western world a holiday weekend of high calorific value.

Easter is more than a commemoration of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, just as it is more than merely a massive chocfest for kids and the confectionery industry. This ancient festival of the West has a rich tradition of folklore which is both fascinating and an important aid to our understanding of our own culture. A surprising amount of the folklore of Easter goes far back into time, long before the beginnings of Christianity. Today, neo-pagans celebrate this time of year as Ostara.

One of the three great Christian festivals of the year (Easter, Whitsuntide and Christmas), Easter was once called the Queen of Festivals. It is known as the paschal festival, deriving its name from the Pascha, or Jewish feast of the Passover, the annual religious ceremony that Jesus and his disciples were celebrating at his Last Supper. The French call the festival Paques, and in Cambridgeshire, England, at least until modern times, it was known as pasch.

Quite early in the history of the Christian church, after considerable controversy, the date of Easter was fixed by a formula that is still in use today. Because Jesus was crucified under the full moon, the full moon was fixed as the regulator of the feast. The rather complex formula goes: 

“Easter Sunday is the Sunday following the Paschal Full Moon (PFM) date for the year.   In June 325 A.D. astronomers approximated astronomical full moon dates for the Christian church, calling them Ecclesiastical Full Moon (EFM) dates.   From 326 A.D. the PFM date has always been the EFM date after March 20 (which was the equinox date in 325 A.D.).”. 

Source with some explanation, and discussion of popular errors

Lunar phase info (pop-up)     Julian day calculator (pop-up)

As a consequence, Easter Day (Easter Sunday) can occur on any day from March 21 to April 25 inclusive. Nancy Brady Cunningham (Feeding the Spirit, Resource Publications, 1988) calls the full moon of March the Spring Waters Moon; a time for going outside at sunset with a bowl of fresh water, and bathing your face and your hands in the water under the light of the full moon.

Fortunately very few people ever have to work out when Easter falls; someone in marketing always seems to know when to start putting out the chocolate eggs in the shops – usually about a week after Christmas. In fact, in days of olde, Christmas was seen as a feast that began the season leading up to Easter, such was the importance of 'Holy Week' in the Christian year.

 

Ancient deities

While Easter’s origins obviously are in the events surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, we can trace other ancient connections with the festival. The old Saxon name for the month of April was Éosturmónath, with a connection both to the easterly winds at this time of year, and to the German Spring goddess Austrô. Eostre (from which the word oestrogen is derived) was the Anglo-Saxon fertility goddess of Spring and goddess of dawn, and her name seems to be connected with the Indian usrâ, meaning dawn, and the Latin Aurora, Roman goddess of dawn. The folklorist Grimm refers to a female spirit of light called Austra.  

 

We can compare these names with the Lithuanian ausra (dawn), the Middle Indo-German ausos (dawn), the Greek goddess of dawn Eos (pictured), and the Old High German verb ostar which expressed movement towards the rising sun. The word east comes from the same root. 

All these words can be associated with the dawn or beginning of the year which comes about in the Northern Hemisphere at around the Spring Equinox, which roughly equates with Easter. In fact, until relatively recently, New Year’s day in Britain was still celebrated on March 25 (Lady Day – the Feast of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary), which could indeed coincide with Easter Day according to the above formula. (When Easter Day did in fact fall on Lady Day, the English used to say “the Lord falls in our Lady’s lap”.)

Because Easter was almost universally celebrated in Europe as the most important religious feast of the year, we have records of very many traditions associated with it. Many have to do with eggs, because the egg is a natural symbol of resurrection and new life, which relates as much to Springtime as to the Biblical events. (Similarly the Easter bunny is a fertility symbol, as rabbits and hares breed so prolifically.) 

On Easter Eve and Easter Day, all the heads of families send great chargers, full of hard eggs, to the Church to get them blessed, which the priests perform by saying several appointed prayers, and making great signs of the Cross over them, and sprinkling them with holy water. The priest, having finished the ceremony, demands how many dozen eggs there be in every basin ... These blest eggs have the virtue of sanctifying the entrails of the body, and are to be the first fat or fleshy nourishment they take after the abstinence of Lent. The Italians do not only abstain from flesh during Lent, but also from eggs, cheese, butter, and all white meats. As soon as the eggs are blessed, every one carries his portion home, and causeth a large table to be set in the best room in the house, which they cover with their best linen, all bestrewed with flowers, and place round about it a dozen dishes of meat, and the great charger of eggs in the midst. 'Tis a very pleasant sight to see these tables set forth in the houses of great persons, when they expose on side-tables (round about the chamber) all the plate they have in the house, and whatever else they have that is rich and curious, in honour of their Easter eggs, which of themselves yield a very fair show, for the shells of them are all painted with divers colours and gilt. Sometimes they are no less than twenty dozen in the same charger, neatly laid together in the form of a pyramid. The table continues in the same posture, covered, all the Easter week, and all those who come to visit them in that time are invited to eat an Easter egg with them, which they must not refuse.
Gabriel d' Emilliane, The Frauds of Romish Monks and Priests set forth in Eight Letters lately written by a Gentlemen, in his journey into Italy, Samuel Roycroft for Robert Clavell, London, 1691

 

There can be no doubt that many of the customs predate the life of Jesus, so connected are they with fertility and magic for the rebirth of Nature. The full moon at the time of the equinox is understandably a time for celebration, particularly as the nights are getting warmer, and a full moon makes night-time outdoor festivities more possible.

 

Old customs

In Czechoslovakia, sexuality was covert but present in the tradition of boys weaving willow or birch branches called dynovacka, which they decorated with ribbons and flowers. With these whips they struck girls on the legs, and the girls had to hand over eggs to stop the beating. In Upper Silesia, boys went up early on Easter morning into their girlfriends’ rooms and whipped them out of bed, calling to the parents “I’ve come to give your daughter her Easter beating”. Strangely, such a thrashing was supposed to bring good luck to a girl.

There is an endless parade of egg customs from Europe, too many to enumerate here. They have spread around the world and turned up in different places with different emphases.

For example, take the custom of egg-rolling. Such games are common throughout Europe. In the north of England in the seventeenth century, boys would go about begging for eggs on Easter Saturday, which they would boil hard, dye with herbs and roll in the fields. At Ramsey, on the Isle of Man, children still climb the hill they know as “the fairy mound” on Easter Monday morning and roll eggs down. Yorkshire people refer to “Troll Day”, troll coming from the verb “ to roll”. In Northumberland the practice is known as booling. In 1877 Dolly Madison, wife of the President of the USA, introduced egg-rolling to the White House, a practice which has been carried on ever since, though now plastic eggs are mostly used, because as many as 100,000 eggs used to be broken in the games.  

 

 
Ukrainian eggs

In many countries at Easter people play the game of egg-tapping, in which it is usually played so that the person whose egg does not break against that of another is the winner. In Greece, on Easter Day, eggs are carried to church where two people, when meeting, tap their eggs together with the greeting “Christ is risen!” In Norway, egg-tapping is called knekke; in England shackling, jarping or dumping; in Holland eiertikken. The Germans have kippen , the Yugoslavs tutsanye and the Danes pigge paskeaeg. In Rumania, red eggs are struck together, in a game called ciocnirea oualor. The ritual greeting is exchanged: “Christ is risen!”  “He is indeed!” In the Swiss city of Berne, the town fathers banned the egg-tapping game of eier düpfen when someone was caught using an egg that had been filled with concrete.  

 

Modern Celtic-style
carved ostrich egg

Eggs, eggs, eggs. Easter lore is filled with eggs. The Russians used to say that a bat was a mouse that had eaten a bit of consecrated Easter egg. The Poles have an old saying that the first coloured eggs were made by the Virgin Mary in order to please the baby Jesus. (It is for this reason that Polish women still make coloured eggs at Christmas time rather than at Easter.)

We know that the Coptic Christians of Egypt had Easter eggs as early as the tenth century, and egg-decorating existed in Poland before the eleventh. A record from the domestic accounts of England's King Edward I in 1290 shows an entry of 18 pence for the purchase of eggs to be decorated with gold leaf. It is believed that confectionery eggs were introduced by the French and Dutch at the beginning of our century. Only then could modern machinery perform the necessary intricate tasks needed to create the fantastic eggs we know today.

 

Plunging and heaving

Other traditions are just as colourful. In Hungary, the first Monday after Easter is called Husvét Hetfoje or Vizbeveto (“Water Plunge Monday”). Young men would splash girls with water in streams and fountains. In return, as a ransom, the maids gave the boys coloured eggs, and on the Tuesday, drenched the boys in turn.  

 

In merrie olde England, men and women indulged in the ancient custom of “lifting” or “heaving”. On Easter Monday, in places like Lancashire, Cheshire, Staffordshire and Warwickshire, men lifted the women into the air and carried them a distance. On the Tuesday, the women would retaliate by doing the same. It is believed by some scholars that the original meaning of the game was to represent the resurrection of Christ, while others suggest it might have more to do with ancient rituals of 'raising' the crops in Springtime.  (See article on Easter Monday.)

Ball playing was a big part of Easter festivities. Even in churches, both the clergy and parishioners played ball for prizes of tansy cakes. An old rhyme from England goes:

 

At stool-ball, Lucia, let us play,
  For sugar, cakes or wine.
Or for tansy let us pay,
  The loss be thine or mine.  

 

Tansy is a bitter herb, and it was used at Eastertide in cakes and puddings in England to represent the bitter herbs used by Jewish people at Passover. However, to show their antipathy to Jews, people also ate a great deal of bacon. 

The Jews were, unfortunately, in olden times blamed for the death of Jesus Christ. In fact, in old England it was the custom for the whole pre-Easter season of Lent, to stone the benighted Jews, who must have had to spend the whole six weeks largely in hiding.  

Despite these old atrocities associated with Easter, there are still traditions that warm the heart. One such custom is that of the Biddenden Cakes. In the parish of Biddendon, Kent, was an ancient endowment by which the poor were given cakes every Easter Sunday in the afternoon. The cakes were made from wheat grown on a special allotment called the 'Bread and Cheese Lands'. The cakes had imprinted on them two female figures side by side, because of the custom's origin. Siamese twins, Mary and Eliza Chulkhurst, born in 1100, left 20 acres to the parish, and each year on Easter the profits made from the land were used to make cakes bearing the women's images to be given to strangers in the village. Cheese and 270 loaves were also to be distributed among the poor.

 

See the sun dance                   

In Ireland, the farmers would go to bed early on Easter Saturday night and rise at about four in the morning in order to see the sun rise. They believed that the Easter sun danced at dawn in honour of the Resurrection. In some parts of England, too, this was believed, and was called the lamb playing. People looked at the sun’s reflection in a well and convinced themselves that the sun danced.  Even now in northern Friesland, it is said that if an Easter egg peels easily the owner will see the sun dance on Easter morning.

Today we do not have many of the old traditions, but Easter Sunday is still a day on which the church congregations are greatest. Any baker worth his crust will bake up a big batch of hot cross buns because they still sell, well, like hot cakes. And the practice of eating Easter eggs has in no way died out; many a confectioner is pleased by huge sales of the chocolate eggs.

Like Christmas, Easter has almost become commercialised beyond any semblance of religious or even folk-custom significance, but as long as children hunt for eggs on Easter Day, we will be re-enacting traditions at that go back millennia. So, blessed Ostara, and happy Easter!

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Marigold Muffins for Eostre
Always use clean, pesticide-free flowers.
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup marigold petals
4 tablespoons honey
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 egg, beaten

Preheat oven to 400°F.
Sift flour, baking powder and salt; set aside.
Bring milk up to a boil then remove from the heat.
Stir in the petals, honey and vegetable oil.
Add egg then add the dry ingredients.
Pour into muffin tins.
Bake 20 minutes.

Source

 

 

Kathleen Jenks, PhD, on Spring lore    Beautiful eggs    Grandma's Easter links

The Rabbit in Easter folklore        Wheel of the Year in the Southern Hemisphere

 

 

* "The times of various events, particularly astronomical and weather phenomena, are often given in "Universal Time" (abbreviated UT) which is sometimes referred to, now colloquially, as "Greenwich Mean Time" (abbreviated GMT). The two terms are often used loosely to refer to time kept on the Greenwich meridian (longitude zero), five hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time (USA - PW). Times given in UT are almost always given in terms of a 24-hour clock. Thus, 14:42 (often written simply 1442) is 2:42 p.m., and 21:17 (2117) is 9:17 p.m. Sometimes a Z is appended to a time to indicate UT, as in 0935Z."   
Source: US Naval Observatory

 

 

When is Easter?

Easter is on a different date each year according to the Northern Vernal Equinox (may fall on March 20, 21 or 22) and the phases of the moon. 

From Wikipedia:

“The timing of Easter depends on the Jewish Pesach, in English Passover, which commemorates the sparing of the Hebrew first-born, as recounted in Exodus, since it is during this holiday that Jesus is believed to have been resurrected.

The date of Easter

“Easter and the holidays that are related to it are moveable feasts, in that they do not fall on a fixed date in the Gregorian calendar (which follows the motion of the Sun and the seasons). Instead, they are based on a lunar calendar like that used by the Jews. At the First Council of Nicea in 325 it was decided that Easter would be celebrated on the Sunday after the 14th day of the first lunar month of spring (in theory, the Sunday after the first full moon on or after the day of the vernal equinox). Eventually, all churches accepted the Alexandrian method of computing Easter, which set the northern hemisphere vernal equinox at 21 March (the actual equinox may fall one or two days earlier or later), and the date of the full moon was to be determined by using the Metonic cycle. A problem here is the difference between the western churches and the Eastern Orthodox Churches. The former now use the Gregorian calendar to calculate the date of Easter, while the latter still use the original Julian calendar. The World Council of Churches proposed a reform of the method of determining the date of Easter at a summit in Aleppo, Syria, in 1997. This reform would have eliminated the difference in the date between the Eastern and Western churches. The reform was due to be implemented starting in 2001, but it failed. See Reform of the date of Easter.

“Computing the date of Easter, known as computus, is somewhat complicated. The Wiki page explains the traditional tabular methods, but also has algorithms such as the one developed by the famous mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss.

Source: Wikipedia

When is it this year? One explanation can be found in Chambers:

“Easter Day is always the first Sunday after the full moon which happens upon or next after the 21st day of March; and if the full moon happens upon a Sunday, Easter Day is the Sunday after.”
Robert Chambers, (Ed.), The Book of Days: A miscellany of popular antiquities in connection with the calendar, etc, W & R Chambers, London, 1881 (1879 Edition is online and 1869 edition here with CD-ROM available; See also The English Year: A Personal Selection from Chambers' Book of Days)

Or, probably better:

“Easter Sunday is the Sunday following the Paschal Full Moon (PFM) date for the year.   In June 325 A.D. astronomers approximated astronomical full moon dates for the Christian church, calling them Ecclesiastical Full Moon (EFM) dates. From 326 A.D. the PFM date has always been the EFM date after March 20 (which was the equinox date in 325 A.D.).” 
Source with some explanation, and discussion of popular errors

Lunabar will put moon phases, equinoxes, solstices, etc on your desktop

The date of Easter (Anglican calculator) (my preferred reference)

The date of Easter (US Naval Observatory)

Timing of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection (Christian Churches of God)

William Hone on Easter    Robert Chambers on Easter

Frazer, Sir James George (1854 - 1941), The Golden Bough, 1922, Ch. 62. The Fire-Festivals of Europe. Section 3. The Easter Fires

More

 

What is a virtual Easter egg?
From the custom of the Easter egg hunt observed in western nations and many parts of Europe, Easter eggs are hidden messages or features which may appear in movies and books, on CDs and DVDs, or in computer programs ... More at Wikipedia

FamilyFun: Egg-cellent Easter

 

             

 Jesus, Odin, Mithras, Bacchus ...
Virgin birth, cross, Lamb of God ...
How are the ancient gods similar?
   Read all about it here