Borrowed and Lent: Where do Easter terms come from?

There is a lot of leeway built into how Christians may celebrate Lent. Borrowed  Many still opt for the traditional sacrifices of meat and poultry, and eat only fish. Others, these days, opt to give up greater pleasures, such as Instagram, chocolate or fries.

The week before Easter, tradition generally kicks in. The previous Sunday, around the world, is Palm Sunday, which marks the start of Holy Week and commemorates the day on which the faithful gathered with cut palm branches to spread along Jesus’s path to Jerusalem.

Palm trees, of course, remain rare across much of the present-day Christian world. So, in England, this is Fig Sunday, with pies and puddings of this Mediterranean fruit baked and eaten instead.

In Germany, also relatively devoid of palm trees, people decorate poles with streamers and branches from the pussy-willow plant (think of these as a dark-wood bushel covered in white buds). In Italy, this is regarded as a good day to make it past a quarrel and start over.

As the week progresses, in Greece, flags fly at half-mast, church bells toll and, after evening mass, a candle-lit procession walks to town squares across the country on Good Friday, in mourning and memory of the crucifixion.

Holy Saturday, in countries such as Bulgaria and Poland, is marked as a day of cooking in preparation, so that Easter, the day of the Resurrection, can be reserved for feasting and celebration.

This feast is a changeable thing. In Britain, the centrepiece is often a simnel cake, which is a fruit cake topped with 11 marzipan balls (to represent each of the disciples except Judas). In Brazil, the special Easter treat is a peanut candy called pacoca.

The Easter egg and bunny weren’t originally Easter-related at all. They have their origins in pre-Christian fertility lore, which deified the hare and rabbit somewhat, because of how remarkably reproductive they are.

The bunny is thought to have become an Easter symbol as recently as the 16th century. In Germany, at this time, children were told that if they were good, the Oschter Haws or Easter / Spring Hare would lay a nest of especially colourful eggs for them to find.

The arrival of the Oschter Haws, a mythical giant bunny that laid colourful eggs in nests, was considered, in terms of childhood’s joys, second only to that of Santa Claus (already a beloved Christmas legend by this time, the legend of St Nicholas dating to about the 3rd century).

The transplanted myth of the Easter Bunny and Easter eggs, intriguingly, would overtake the others in popularity and recognisability, and become the most identifiable symbol associated with Easter celebrations — representing, in this case, not fertility but rather new life.

Different cultures have since developed their own traditions when it comes to the Easter egg. They are traditionally crimson in Greece, to honour the blood of Christ. In Slavic cultures, eggs are decorated in the regal and celebratory hues of gold and silver. And on Holy Thursday it is a custom in Austria to eat “green eggs”, hard-boiled and served with a green herb mayonnaise (or cold poached eggs a parsley aspic), in commemoration of the Last Supper.

Now for a truly delightful bit of linguistic history. The word “carnival” is said to derive from the Latin “carne vale” (literally, “goodbye to meat”). It was originally a single massive celebration that marked the start of Lent, or the Holy Week. There was singing and music and large quantities of fermented beverages, in a tradition generally believed to be linked to 16th-century Portuguese missionaries and islands in the Caribbean. Argentina is among the countries that still conduct carnivals at Lent.

Celebrations are rather quieter in Bulgaria. Here, Easter is marked by the pre-lunch ritual of cracking the eggs. Each person at the table selects an egg and taps it against the eggs of others in turn. Whoever ends up with the last unbroken egg, it is said, will have a year of good luck.