A date set by the Moon
Easter is the most important festival in the Christian year, remembering the day Christians believe Jesus rose from the dead. Unlike Christmas, it has no fixed date. In the year 325, a meeting of church leaders at Nicaea agreed that it should fall on the first SUNDAY after the first full moon after the spring equinox. That means Easter Sunday can land anywhere between 22 March and 25 April. Many Orthodox churches use the older Julian calendar to work it out, so their Easter is often a week or more later.
The English word Easter may come from Eostre, a spring goddess mentioned by the monk Bede in the 700s, though historians argue about whether she was ever widely worshipped. In most other European languages, the name comes from Pesach, the Jewish festival of Passover, which Easter follows closely in the calendar.
Why eggs?
For centuries, Christians gave up eggs, meat and dairy during Lent, the forty days before Easter. The hens kept laying anyway, so by Easter Sunday there were plenty of EGGS to use up, and they were boiled, dyed and given as gifts. In Greece they are still dyed deep red. The first chocolate eggs were made in Europe in the early 1800s, and the Fry company in Bristol sold the first hollow chocolate eggs in Britain in 1873.
The most extravagant eggs of all were made by the jeweller Peter Carl Fabergé for the Russian royal family from 1885, each with a hidden surprise inside, such as a tiny golden carriage. Fifty were made for the Tsars, and a few are still missing. In 2012 one of the lost eggs turned up in the United States, bought at a market by a scrap-metal dealer who had nearly melted it down for its gold. In England, egg rolling down steep hills is an Easter Monday tradition, and at the White House in Washington children have rolled eggs across the lawn since 1878.
The bunny and the bilby
The Easter BUNNY began in Germany, where children were told that the Osterhase, the Easter hare, brought eggs for good children and hid them in the garden. German settlers carried the story to America in the 1700s, and children made nests in their bonnets or caps for the hare to fill; that became the Easter BASKET. Hares and RABBITS, which have lots of babies in spring, were already signs of new life.
In Australia, where rabbits are a pest that destroys farmland, many shops sell chocolate bilbies instead, and our Australian animals page covers the real bilby.
Spring flowers and new life
In the northern half of the world, Easter comes as SPRING arrives, and its symbols are signs of new life: the CHICK, the LAMB, the DAFFODIL, the TULIP and the white LILY, often used in churches. Easter Island in the Pacific took its name from the day a Dutch captain first saw it, Easter Sunday in 1722. An Easter egg HUNT, a BONNET parade, PASTEL colours, a CARROT left out for the bunny and BLOSSOM in BLOOM all belong to the season, and a Christian family may DECORATE eggs to share as TREATS after church.