Easter Trivia

Here's some Easter trivia for you as we head into the weekend's celebration:

The idea of Easter baskets can be dated back to the Christian tradition of taking baskets of food to church to be blessed at Easter.

Hot cross buns first pop up in print in England in 1733; the sweet, spicy yeast buns traditionally contain currants or raisins, and are marked on top by a cross (an X in the dough). They are traditionally eaten on Good Friday, the Friday before Easter Sunday.

Queen Elizabeth I and her royal court passed a law limiting the consumption of hot cross buns to certain times of the year: Easter, Christmas and funerals.

Pagans used to throw a spring fertility festival in honour of Eostre, an ancient Anglo-Saxon goddess; we get the term Easter from her name.

The idea of decorating eggs for Easter has been around for a long time. In 1290, the household accounts of King Edward I recorded an expense of 18 pence for 450 gold-leafed and coloured eggs, to be given as Easter gifts.

In Greece, Easter eggs are traditionally dyed red, in remembrance of the blood shed by Jesus.

Most Easter lilies -- 95 per cent of the world market -- are grown in the U.S., along the western coast between California and Oregon. The area produces 11 million bulbs for commercial greenhouses around the world.

Why is ham often served for Easter dinner? Before the days of refrigeration, hogs were butchered every autumn, and their meat was prepared for curing, a process that generally takes six to seven months -- about the time when Easter takes place each year.

Easter always falls between March 22 and April 25.

Pysanka is a specific term used for the practice of Easter egg painting.

From the very early times, egg has been considered to be the most important symbol of rebirth.

The initial baskets of Easter were given the appearance of bird's nests.

The maiden chocolate eggs recipes were made in Europe in the nineteenth century.

Each year witnesses the making of nearly 90 million chocolate bunnies.

Next to Halloween, Easter holiday paves way for confectionary business to boom.

When it comes to eating of chocolate bunnies, it is the ears that are preferred to be eaten first by as many as 76% of people.

In the catalogue of kids' favorite Easter foodstuff, Red jellybeans occupy top most position.

The custom of giving eggs at Easter time has been traced back to Egyptians, Persians, Gauls, Greeks and Romans, to whom the egg was a symbol of life.

In medieval times a festival of egg-throwing was held in church, during which the priest would throw a hard-boiled egg to one of the choir boys. It was then tossed from one choir boy to the next and whoever held the egg when the clock struck 12 was the winner and retained the egg.

Easter is now celebrated (in the words of the Book of Common Prayer) on the first Sunday after the full moon which happens on or after March 21, the Spring Equinox.

Easter Bonnets are a throw back to the days when the people denied themselves the pleasure of wearing fine angels for the duration of Lent.

Some Churches still keep up the old tradition of using evergreens - symbolic of eternal life - embroidered in red on white, or woven in straw, but most now prefer displays of flowers in the spring colours of green, yellow and white.

Americans celebrate Easter with a large Easter egg hunt on the White House Lawn.
The date of Passover is variable as it is dependent on the phases of the moon, and thus Easter is also a movable feast.

Each Easter season, Americans buy more than 700 million Marshmallow Peeps, shaped like chicks, as well as Marshmallow Bunnies and Marshmallow Eggs, making them the most popular non-chocolate Easter candy.

Jellybeans did not become an Easter tradition until the 1930s. They were probably first made in America by Boston candy maker William Schrafft, who ran advertisements urging people to send jellybeans to soldiers fighting in the Civil War.Americans consume 16 billion jellybeans at Easter, many of them hidden in baskets. If all the Easter jellybeans were lined end to end, they would circle the globe nearly three times.

Pretzels were originally associated with Easter. The twists of a pretzel were thought to resemble arms crossed in prayer.

And most importantly...

Easter is a Christian Festival that celebrates the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. On the third day after Good Friday, the day of his crucifixion, now called Easter Sunday, He rose from the dead. Mourners went to His tomb to collect His body. However, He was not there and they were greeted by an angel who said:

"He is Risen".