Kenzie Connolly, Junior
With Easter coming up so quickly, there are some people out there still who do not know the history of this holiday. So many factors support the role of Easter and why everyone does what they do on this holiday. From the egg dying, to the egg hunts, to the Easter bunny, to the candy inside the eggs, to the Easter baskets, each factor plays a role in adding to this special holiday that takes place on a Sunday every year.
Easter always falls upon a Sunday, and there is a specific reason why this is celebrated at the crack of dawn at a church service. It is said that Easter morning Mary opened Jesus’ tomb to find it empty, which is why services are held that morning. The first ever service was actually held in Germany by their Moravian Church.
Another part of this holiday's history that not many people know is how the Easter bunny came about. As everyone knows, Easter is the holiday that falls in the spring time when flowers are blooming and little animals are running about. Rabbits actually breed and then end up giving birth usually in the springtime, so naturally in ancient spring celebrations, they incorporated the bunny, or rabbit, as a symbol for Easter. An old story used to be told in Germany where a poor woman who loved children would hide brightly colored eggs in her garden, but one year kids saw a hare, bunny, hopping across her garden and believed that the animal left the eggs for them.
This part of Easter everybody loves, the eggs! Many ancient cultures, such as Greek and Egyptians for example, looked at eggs as a sign of fertility and new life. That is how eggs came in to play, but other cultures and religions did different things with them. Christians were the religion that started dying the eggs based on what the colors meant to them at church. For example, yellow stood for resurrection, red stood for the blood of Jesus, and sometimes they would paint different scenes from the bible.
To collect those Easter eggs, people need something to put them in, and this is how Easter baskets come in to play. This part in Easter's history goes along with that German story of the poor woman because children started to think the “Easter Hare” left these eggs for them, so they started creating small nests that consisted of leaves and branches in their gardens where the bunny could place them. There is also another interpretation of these Easter baskets. This one started with farmers who would bring seedlings in a basket to be blessed and have the hopes of a “bountiful” harvest.
Since there are eggs, people need something to put in those eggs, which resulted in candy. In 1875, the company Cadbury, which created candy eggs and much more, was one of the first companies to open up the idea of putting candy inside of eggs. In the 19th century, it became very popularized to have candy inside of an egg.
Now having the basket, colorful eggs, and candy, all that is left is the Easter egg hunt. It is believed that the first egg hunt can be brought back to Martin Luthur who was a central figure during the Protest Reformation. Men would hide these eggs for both women and children to find, and when these eggs were found it was supposed to remind them of having joy, the same kind of joy Mary had when she opened Jesus’ tomb and found it empty.
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