A Look at Easter Traditions and More

Have you ever wondered about some of the traditions we have about Easter? Of course, you know why Christians celebrate this Resurrection Sunday when Christ arose and defeated death. That is what gives the Christian hope.

“He is not here, but is risen!” Luke 24:6 (NKJ)

But what about some of the other traditions such as why we dress up in new clothes and wear those Easter bonnets? Old superstition held that if you wore new clothes on Easter, you would have good luck for the rest of the year. I never heard of that until I looked out on the internet for information about those Easter traditions, but it was always fun to get my kids new spring outfits for Easter Sunday when they were young. It seemed a great way to welcome spring and warmer weather on the way.

And what about those Easter bonnets? At one time all ladies wore hats to church every Sunday, and if you go back to the 1800’s or early 1900’s some of those hats were very elaborate. Then along came Irving Berlin’s hit song in 1933, “Easter Parade,” to make the wearing of those hats seem like an Easter tradition.

We love our Easter lilies too. These beautiful flowers originated in Japan and arrived in England in the late 18th century, but the United States didn’t join in with the Easter lily trend until after World War I. The beautiful white lilies that spring up and bloom from dormant bulbs seem to represent hope and rebirth, two things celebrated at Easter.

The idea of the Easter bunny delivering candy and eggs originated in Germany during the Middle Ages, with the first written mention of this tradition dating back to the 16th century. Dutch settlers in Pennsylvania brought the bunny to the United States in the 1700s and maybe helped make chocolate bunny sales boom. We do love our Easter candy.

What kind of candy do we like best at Easter? Chocolate leads the way with millions of chocolate eggs and bunnies. It’s estimated that we spend $2.5 billion on chocolate this time of the year. But we also love our jelly beans. Americans consume 16 million jelly beans over the Easter holiday. That’s enough jelly beans to circle the globe not once, not twice, but three times. Jelly beans were first introduced as an Easter treat in the 1930s. I have to admit I buy a sack of jelly beans every Easter and never any other time of the years. Oh, and I did buy some of those chocolate eggs too but no chocolate bunnies or marshmallow peeps.

Before Easter Sunday was celebrated with chocolate Easter eggs, people dyed hardboiled eggs with natural plant dyes and decorated with intricate designs. This tradition is said to go back to some of the earliest days of Christianity, with the eggs originally dyed red to represent the blood that Christ shed when he was crucified.

Last, have you ever wondered about why the date for Easter isn’t the same every year and just how the varying date is decided? Easter Sunday can be anywhere between March 22 and April 25. The moon and the vernal equinox play crucial roles in determining the date each year.

Here’s a simple calculation for ‘When is Easter’ that works for most years. Start your calculation from the Vernal Equinox, which is usually on March 20th, the first day of spring. Determine when will be the next full moon. Easter falls on the following Sunday.

In 2008, Easter was on March 23. It won’t be that early again until 2228. The next time it will be a day earlier on March 22 will be 2285. The last time Easter was on March 22 was 1818. So this year it was one of the later dates.

Of course, when Easter is or how much chocolate we eat or eggs we dye or hide isn’t what is most important about celebrating Easter. We celebrate Easter as Resurrection Sunday in our churches and in our hearts.

I hope you had a blessed Easter Sunday. My two sons were both at church with my husband and me this morning with all their kids. We filled three pews in our little country church. One son and his family drove down from West Virginia for church. They got up and on the move early to make the day extra special for this mom and dad. And while we didn’t have on Easter bonnets, the grandkids did have on their Easter finery and looked great to this grandmother’s eyes.

Do you get new clothes on Easter  or wear that Easter bonnet?

In my upcoming book, When the Meadow Blooms, my young character wears one of her grandmother’s hats to town and feels very dressed up.

Lincoln looked over at her as they tooled along a straight stretch of road. “Nice hat.”

“Thank you.” She could feel her cheeks heating up again. “It was my grandmother’s.”

“I’ll bet she never looked as pretty in it as you do.”

I can’t wait for you to meet Calla in my new book.