Welcome to our Do You Know series, we have some amazing Easter facts for you to share with all your friends and family! You can also find more here.
Spring Into Easter
The name Easter comes from Eastre, the Anglo- Saxon goddess of Spring whose symbols are spring flowers, fairies, butterflies,hares and eggs. Eastre is alsoknown as Eostre, Oestre or Ostara. Ostara is a northern European name for Astarte, which means “womb”.
The Easter Bunny originates from the paintings of the Goddess Eastre, who was always with an Easter hare. This has evolved into the Easter Bunny.
Easter is the oldest Christian holiday on record.
Goddess Eastre by Johannes Gehrts
A Royal Egg-travaganza!
Painting and decorating eggs at Easter is Called “Pysanka”. The brightly coloured eggs are symbolic of spring flowers and new beginnings. King Edward I of England may also have contributed to the tradition of decorating eggs to celebrate Easter. In the 13th century, Edward I ordered 450 eggs to be decorated with gold-leaf. They were given as Easter gifts to the royal household.
In Christianity, Easter Eggs are red to symbolise the blood of Jesus. Early egg dyes came from onion peel, bark and flower petals.
Most adults prefer milk chocolate to dark.
Hatch-tastic
Easter baskets have special symbolism. The woven treat containers represent birds’ nests and new life, especially when filled with eggs!
Chocolate eggs may have originated in France and Germany in the early 19th century but J. S. Fry & Sons Limited didn’t introduce the first chocolate egg to the UK until 1873. John Cadbury made his first “French eating Chocolate” in 1842 but it was not until 1875 that he made the first Cadbury Easter Eggs.
Egg-streme Heights
The largest decorated Easter egg was nearly 55 feet tall and over 35 feet) in diameter. Its creators were Associacao Visite Pomerode of Santa Catarina, Brazil. The egg was part of Pomerode’s annual Easter festival in February 2023. It was in the style of Kashubian folk art and designed by a local artist.
The exchange of eggs for Easter dates back to a springtime custom older than Easter itself! Eggs were a symbol of fertility and rebirth. This can be traced back to the Egyptians, Persians, Gauls, Greeks and the Romans. In Christianity, for the celebration of “Eastertide”, the egg represents the empty tomb of Jesus, from which Jesus was resurrected. We give eggs as a symbol of joy, rebirth/new life, and new beginnings – basically all things positive, optimistic and happy.
Cadburys make 500 million Creme Eggs every year! If you stood them on top of each other, they would be 10-times higher than Mount Everest. The Birmingham factory produces 1.5 million Creme Eggs every day. The Creme Egg is the most popular egg-shaped chocolate in the world.
Knot Your Average Snack
When we think of Easter, chocolate, hot-cross buns and eggs usually spring to mind. But pretzels are also an Easter snack because the twists resemble arms crossing in prayer. From the 1950s, it was tradition in Germany to eat a pretzel and a hardboiled egg for dinner on Good Friday.
Easter changes every year because of the lunar calendar. Easter falls on the first Sunday after the full moon which takes place on or shortly after 21st March. This date signals the start of spring.
