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The funny thing about Easter is that it is part of several different traditions, such as those of Christians and Early Anglo-Saxons. Christians purport that the reason for the season is to commemorate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who told his apostles to go out and spread the word so that mankind may be redeemed.

Early Anglo-Saxons believed in celebrating nature, the goddess of fertility and the changing of the seasons. In the Jewish culture, they celebrate Passover, which relates to the freedom from slavery of their ancestors. In any case, springtime is seen as a rebirth, a new beginning and a time of great hope.

Learning about Easter symbolism involves looking back past its Christian origins. In pagan times, the sun, the moon, gods, goddesses and nature were often worshipped. The vernal equinox was a special time of year because it was one of two days where the sun shone directly vertical from the equator, making the day longer.

With more daytime hours, preparation for the spring harvest could begin and it seemed that love was in the air. The egg was viewed as the ultimate symbol of fertility, as an encapsulation of the great mystery of life. Rabbits, prolific breeders capable of carrying more than one litter of young at a time, also became primary symbols of springtime, of fertility and of Easter.

To read more Knowing More About Easter

Easter is an opportunity for families to come together and celebrate new life each spring, whether religious or not. Christians see this holiday as a time to repent, to acknowledge sins and to celebrate the rebirth of Christ the Savior.

Non-Christians view the Easter holiday as the celebration of fertility, new life and new beginnings, saying goodbye to winter and welcoming springtime. Whether the celebrations involve hot cross buns and chocolate bunnies or prayers and fasting, it is an important part of our calendar year.

The Passover feast is an important part of the traditional Easter celebration. Foods associated with Easter dinner include ham, lamb and eggs. Special soups come out, like hot sour rye, fanesca, borscht and magiritsa, as do special desserts like babka, hot cross buns, pizzelle, pastiera, kulich and simnel cake. Breads like folar, penia, paska and tsoureki are exclusive to this feast as well. The different dishes vary from culture to culture, but worldwide, this feast is one of the largest of the year. 

The Easter holiday is an interesting one because, like many others, it has both Christian and Pagan roots. It is the annual Christian celebration of Christ’s resurrection. Pious traditions include attending mass on Good Friday, Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday, as well as fasting, praying, performing good deeds and giving up a sacrifice for Lent (the forty days preceding Easter).

However, even the non-religious celebrate Easter because spring festivals date as far back as the 8th century. In the month of April, Anglo-Saxons celebrated Teutonic, goddess of spring and fertility, with egg rolling contests, gift giving, egg painting and dancing. Similarly, the Phrygians performed Equinox ceremonies to awaken the god Demeter and the Greeks celebrated the Demeter’s daughter Persephone’s return from the underworld as a symbol of new spring life.

To read more Celebrating Easter Holidays

The Easter tradition means many different things to many different cultures and religions. Families celebrating the Jewish Passover focus on prayers, the Seder dinner, spring cleaning and storytelling.

Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus with mass, feasting and a month of preparation. Others enjoy an Easter parade, send cards, go on Easter egg hunts or get photos taken with the Easter bunny.

In 2000, Americans spent $1.9 billion on candy for Easter, which was second only to Halloween at $2 billion, edging out Christmas at $1.4 billion and Valentine’s Day at $1 billion. Even though the initial Easter sweets included hot cross buns and pretzels, the chocolate bunny will be stamped out over 90 million times this year.

Additionally, 4.2 million Peeps and 16 billion Jellybeans will be consumed during Easter Sunday snacking. While chocolate eggs are the most popular Easter candy, they were not manufactured until the 1800s. They are now being made by Cad bury, Reese, Kinder, Lid and many more companies around the world.

Card giving can’t possibly rival Christmas, Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day cards, but Easter is, in fact, the fourth most popular holiday for sending cards, says American Greetings. Like most other cards, the Easter card first came from Victorian era England.

There are Christian Easter cards, Easter Bunny cards or springtime greetings. Today, people may choose from traditional paper cards or free online greeting cards deliverable by email.

To read more The Easter Celebrations In Different Cultures

If you are out of ideas and still need some gifts for your family and friends that are just not your typical offerings, then consider going online to gift basket com. This site, and many others like it, offers a plethora of basket gift choices. You can find everything from fruit baskets to Christmas gift baskets. Just use a little imagination and you will be on your way to giving the perfect gift.

It appears that when it comes to popularity, a fruit and/or wine gift basket tops the list. However, you do not have to limit yourself to just those choices. However, it is a good idea to stick with just fruit in the basket if you do not know the personal preferences of the recipient, as with a corporate gift.

If you want to order a gift basket, then get online and visit gift basket com to see if they have what you are looking for. Or, just check around any of the other similar sites and perhaps you can come up with a few ideas on how to make your own gift baskets.

You may think that a gift basket is not really appropriate for some occasions, but at gift basket com you can pretty much find something for everyone. For example, for a nice Fathers day gift you can fill a basket with anything relating to their favorite sport, perhaps some golf balls, or something for their car or for their workshop in the garage.

All such things will bring a smile to their face. Visit gift basket com to get some other ideas on the different types of baskets you can get and have delivered, or to create on your own with just a little bit of imagination and thought.

To read more The Better Choices At Gift Basket Com

The holidays are a time for family and food! Next to Thanksgiving, Easter Sunday is one of the greatest feast days of the year. The main dishes may be cooked differently, but most cultures include a lavish item like lamb, goat, roast chicken or ham.

Symbolic foods often make an appearance too. Eggs symbolize Christ’s emergence from the tomb or spring fertility, depending on which school of thought you hail from, and hot cross buns symbolize the crossed arms of Christ as he lay in the tomb, before His resurrection. Around the world, the menus are rich, symbolic and bountiful.

Traveling to Poland, the holidays are both a religious celebration and also a lavish extravaganza full of many rich foods. It is customary to have an Easter basket (”Swieconka Basket”) blessed by the priest, which contains a Paschal Lamb made of bread, cake or butter (symbolizing Jesus as “the Lamb of God”), decorated and plain eggs (symbolizing rebirth), meat like ham or kielbasa sausage, horseradish, bitter herbs (signifying the bitterness of Christ’s suffering), salt (representing hospitality), pussy willow branches (signifying the earth’s awakening), bread (symbolizing communion), and traditional sweet bread like Plotek. Boiled kielbasa sausage, ham, cold cuts, pickled beets, cabbage, green vegetables, potato salad or mashed potatoes with caramelized onion and dill, pound cakes, sweet breads, kolaczi (lamb cake) and babka are traditional fare.

Like Russians and Ukrainians, the Poles are noted for their beautiful style of Easter egg decorating. The Monday after Easter Sunday (”Dyngus Day”) is one of the oldest and rowdiest holidays in the Polish calendar year, where men and women dance to polkas, enjoy a Polish beer, squirt each other with water and whack each other with pussy willow branches to celebrate spring.

The holidays are primarily celebrated with feasting, but also with decorations. The Easter basket is an important tradition for children. Inside the basket, they will find spring-oriented toys like jump ropes, sidewalk chalk and bubbles, as well as activity books and delicious treats like the chocolate bunny, marshmallow peeps and colorful jellybeans.

Kids like to make Easter crafts, which can be hung up in the home and the leafless Easter tree decorated with hollow eggs has become a new fad in America, which originated in Germany. Dyed Easter eggs are made from food color tablets and vinegar. It is also the time of year to decorate oneself in new clothes, according to tradition dating back to Shakespearean times.

To read more The Holidays At Easter Time

Like the Christmas tree, German settlers also brought the Easter bunny (or rather “Oschter Haws”) to America in the 1800s. It was believed that the Oschter Haws laid a nest of colored eggs for small children to celebrate springtime.

Eggs were seen as the symbol of life and renewal, while rabbits obviously signified fertility. Today, Easter baskets and Easter egg hunt traditions continue, and the bunny is one of the most commercially recognizable symbols of Easter.

In the earliest German tales of Easter, children would eagerly build nests in barns or gardens, often out of hats, bonnets, leaves or sticks. Later, the Easter basket would became bigger and bolder as the commercial nature of the Easter holiday began to emerge.

At one time, the white Easter hare would leave eggs wrapped in gold leaves or they were brightly dyed. Modern Easter baskets are filled with chocolate eggs, marshmallow Peeps, jelly beans, toys and the ever-so-popular chocolate bunny. Each year children look forward to the arrival of the Easter bunny just as much as they do for Santa Claus.

Scholars purport that the Easter bunny found his eggs far before the German tales emerged, telling of Oschterhase and his nests of colored eggs. Early Anglo-Saxons saw the hare as the companion of the moon goddess and the egg as symbolic of the sun god at spring equinox celebrations.

The hare, born with his eyes open, was seen as the guardian of the moonlight, while Easter eggs painted different colors represented the sunlight in the spring. In April, the Saxons commemorated their goddess Eastre, which many say metamorphosed into “Easter.”

To read more Easter Bunny With The Multicolored Eggs

Some say the Easter egg is just another “pagan tradition” somehow associated with the resurrection of Jesus. However, Christians have long touted the egg’s mysterious nature, commenting on how the egg symbolizes rebirth and is often used as a symbol of Christ’s death.

The shell represents the protective darkness of the tomb of Jesus, the hatching chicks represents Christ’s emergence from the tomb, the egg shape represents eternity with no beginning and no end, not to mention new life springing forth from death.

Poland and the Ukraine are renowned for their beautiful Easter egg traditions. The Polish “Pisankas” are made by immersing hardboiled eggs into wax, carving patterns into the wax, then dipping it into various natural herbs to set the background color.

For instance, onion peels make brown, alder bark and walnut shells make black, petals of the mallow flower create violet, beet juice makes pink, periwinkle leaves create green and marigolds make gold. In Ukraine, “Pysanky” eggs are brilliantly hand-painted using geometric shapes like diamonds, triangles or squares. It was said that each province, village and family in Ukraine had its own unique symbols, rituals and traditions.

In addition to Easter egg decorating, children love the thrill of the Easter egg hunt as well, where they run through the (often muddy) fields in search of the most eggs, the golden egg or the lucky egg that will be selected in a raffle following the contest.

The final prize may be a hefty Easter basket full of goodies or an enormous chocolate bunny, which for a child is the crème de la crème of any Easter celebration.

To read more Decorated Easter Egg In Many Cultures