EASTER. The date of Sunday, April 17, 2022 commemorates the resurrection of Jesus according to Catholics. This Christian holiday has some nice surprises, meals and cakes in store. What do chocolate eggs, bells or bunnies mean? All about the symbolism, meaning and tradition of Easter.
[Mis à jour le 10 mars 2022 à 19h32] Easter is celebrated Sunday, April 17, 2022. In order to have a benchmark to calculate the date of Easter, it is celebrated on the Sunday following the spring full moon. With the vernal equinox taking place on March 20 or 21 each year (March 20 in 2022), Easter occurs no earlier than March 22 and no later than April 25.
Emblem of life, fertility and rebirth, the egg is omnipresent at every Easter, the date of Christ’s resurrection. Where does this custom come from? Apart from chocolate eggs, are there any dishes specially designed for Easter Day in France? But by the way, what are the origins of this Easter celebration? In this special Easter page, we will try to answer all these questions.
Easter Sunday is on the 17th April 2022, followed by the public holiday of Easter Monday18 April. How is the date of the Easter holiday programmed each year? For a long time, Christians celebrated Easter at the same time as Passover, which could fall on a Sunday, Monday or Saturday. Passover is calculated on the lunar calendar (the month begins with the new moon) and falls on 15 Nissan, the first month of the year, straddling March and April. Corn in 325, the ecumenical council of Nicaea decided that Easter should henceforth take place on a Sunday, day of the resurrection of Jesus. For this, he establishes a clever calculation known as “Comput”. The day of Easter is fixed on the first Sunday after the full moon which follows the first day of spring… Like Ascension or Pentecost, Easter is therefore a movable feast, celebrated between March 22 and April 25. Another difference: for the Orthodox who use the Julian calendar and not the Gregorian calendar, the spring arrives on April 3, not March 20 or 21. Each year, the Orthodox Easter (which is also used in the singular) is therefore celebrated a few days later.
To fully understand Easter, we must first start from the heritage of Jewish, Christian and also pagan traditions and beliefs. Easter is one of the main Christian holidays today. But it borrows its name from the Jewish holiday, Passover, which takes place at the same time. Two celebrations that do not have the same meaning. In the Jewish religion, Passover is “the feast of feasts”. It commemorates the flight from Egypt of the Hebrew people, subjected to slavery at the time of Pharaoh. According to the Bible and the book of Exodus, on Easter day, the Red Sea would have opened to let Moses and the Hebrews pass, pursued by the troops of Pharaoh, thus allowing them to reach the Promised Land of Israel. . Easter therefore marks the birth of the people of Israel and is intended, more broadly, to be a celebration of freedom. In Hebrew, Passover is also called “Pessah” which means passage.
As to Easter Christian, they celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. According to the Gospels, the death and resurrection of Christ take place at the time of the Jewish Passover, which explains why the Christian holiday borrows the same name. For Christians, Easter celebrates the resurrection of Jesus, three days after his death, and the “passage” to eternal life. But Easter, multiple, also commemorates for Christian believers the events preceding the rebirth of Jesus (Last Supper or meal, Passion of Christ designating his arrest and his death). It is one of the most important festivals of the year – for the Orthodox, the most important – which spans the whole of Holy Week. Easter is central to the Christian faith.
The Holy Week is, for Christians around the world, the week before Easter. Beginning with the Palm Sunday, it commemorates the Passion of Christ. Several key dates punctuate Holy Week. After Palm Sunday which commemorates the day when Jesus arrives in Jerusalem, acclaimed by the crowd, arrives the Holy Thursday, three days from Easter Sunday, which celebrates the last meal, the Last Supper, taken by Jesus with his disciples. Then there is the Good Friday which commemorates the day of the crucifixion, a day of fasting for Christians, and the Holy Saturdaya day of silence and meditation, before the Easter Vigil, in the evening, which precedes the celebration of his Resurrection on Easter Sunday.
Easter Sunday, the date of the end of Lent, marks the end of a period of food deprivation for practitioners. In the past, this tradition was more respected than today. And during the 40 days of fasting, devotees did not eat eggs. At the end of the period, the believers offered themselves the productions of their hens which they had accumulated. Eggs that could be decorated, from the Renaissance. As for chocolate, it would have first appeared in eggshells before all-chocolate eggs emerged in the first half of the 19th century. Since then, with a little help from marketing, chocolate eggs have become the symbol of Easter in the collective unconscious, as are the galette de l’Epiphany or the Candlemas pancakes.
Easter Sunday is, for Christians around the world, a day of celebration during which all the prohibitions of Lent are lifted and the egg, symbol of life, is omnipresent. For all pagan cultures, the egg seems to have been the emblem of life, fertility and rebirth. Some sources report that the Persians already offered eggs 5,000 years ago when the spring. It was then the turn of the Gauls and the Romans. These traditions were then assimilated by Christianity. The resurrection of Christ is greeted with joy, so a traditional festive meal is prepared with the ringing of the bells.
Did you know that the egg has been a symbol of renewal for millennia? Among the Egyptians or the Romans, it was thus customary to offer an egg, to signify life, at the time of spring. If from the Middle Ages, the Church forbade eating eggs during Lent, they were kept and decorated at the end of the fast. In the XVIIIand century, the eggs were emptied to be filled with chocolate at the end of the Lenten fast. This is how the first chocolate eggs appeared, a tradition that has endured over time with techniques offering various flavors and shapes. Russian and Ukrainian Easter eggs nowadays are real works of art, with incredible patterns and colors, sometimes depicting the cross of Christ. They are blessed before being offered to loved ones.
It’s time to delight the children, who will be able to make personalized Easter eggs with decorations. Consult our fact sheet Easter egg: how to paint and decorate it? To your brushes!
Between Holy Thursday evening and Easter Sunday, church bells do not ring as a sign of mourning. But it is on the night of Saturday to Easter Sunday that they begin to chime to announce the joy of Christ’s resurrection. According to tradition, the children were told that the bells were going to be blessed by the Pope in Rome and that when they returned, at Easter, they would chime and spread eggs and bells in the gardens. The rabbit tradition comes from eastern France and Germany. The Easter Hare, called Osterhase, is symbolic of fertility and renewal in the Germanic pagan tradition. In German-speaking Lorraine and Alsace, it is the Easter hare that scatters the eggs in the gardens.
Recipes with rabbit, Easter lamb… Many options are available to you to treat your loved ones. Because if Easter immediately brings to mind chocolate, with its many bells, eggs or figures, savory is also honored on this occasion. Many variations are possible for Easter lamb alone: rack of lamb in a crust, 7-hour lamb confit… Find our recipe ideas below, as well as the origin of the Easter celebration.
At Easter, lamb, rabbit and eggs are the three star products of the traditional meal. Paschal lamb is the most traditional option for your menu. For those who don’t like lamb, opt for the rabbit. As for vegetarians, they will prefer eggs! AT Easter, in addition to a menu including traditional dishes such as Easter lamb and chocolate eggs, you can also prepare innovative dishes. Find below several recipes, as well as their meanings.
Easter lamb: how to cook it?
It’s up to you to select the piece, between the shoulder, the leg, the rack or the mouse of lamb, and discover the recipe that gives you the most mouth water:
How to cook your own Easter eggs?
What if we took advantage of this holiday to give in to the gluttony of good homemade eggs? Making chocolate Easter eggs isn’t complicated, but molds are needed, and you need at least 3 hours to spare. Discover our best chocolate or sugar Easter egg recipes below:
The best Easter chocolate recipes
Also discover our recipe, simple and easy to make, homemade Easter chocolates via this tutorialor check out our best recipes on the subject:
What are the different Easter cake recipes?
Know that chocolate eggs are not the only treats at Easter. If you want to stay in the tradition, then opt for the little Alsatian Easter lamb baptized osterlammele. These little egg-rich Easter lambs are originally offered the morning after Easter Mass. Tradition has it that it is surmounted by a small tissue paper pennant in Alsatian colours. If you want to stay in the spirit of chocolate bunnies, why not make some carrot easter cookies in the shape of rabbits or a Easter carrot cake, a must-have among the English? For those who prefer chocolate cakes, try the chocolate easter nestto flower pot chocolate oreo easter cookies or to bavarois flavored with orange and decorated with chocolate eggs… Yum ! And if you want to be more inventive, why not get molds in the shape of animals like lamb? Don’t forget to decorate your cakes with Easter eggs or mini chicks!
