The lengthening days to Easter

by Lucy Lethbridge

Easter Sunday is early this year, on 23 March. The rule, since the Middle Ages, has been that Easter day is observed on the Sunday following the first full moon after the day of the vernal equinox. In fact the Christian liturgical calendar (vastly complicated since an astronomical full moon in fact different from an ecclesiastical full moon) is positively topsy-turvy for 2008. Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the forty days of Lent, is this year on 6 February, five days BEFORE Candlemas on 11 February, the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord, which marks the end of Christmastide. The Greek Orthodox Easter will be a month later - on 21 April, which will be more familiar for those who associate Easter with the coming of Spring rather than rites of Christianity. Eostre, after all, from whom the English get the word Easter, was the Anglo-Saxon goddess of fertility, of snowdrops, eggs and bunnies, and those images have been adapted into the Christian cycle of renewal and rebirth which is celebrated every year.

But even if the sap is markedly not yet rising in rainy March, there will be the same extraordinary richness and variation to be found in Easter celebrations all over Europe. The vivid, fierce processions for Holy Week that are found in small towns and villages all over Spain and Italy are testament to the proud Catholicism that still shapes the culture of both countries. In Passion Week towns and villages enact in their own streets, the Via Dolorosa of Christ's Passion, with its fourteen Stations of the Cross. To the northern and western European, they may seem strange, ancient traditions, untouched by protestant reformation. In Seville, more than one hundred statues of religious figures - saints and Madonnas - will be carried through the streets of the city between Palm Sunday and Lunes de Pascua (Easter Sunday). In most towns these figures are carried by ancient brotherhoods - like craftsmens' guilds and religious fraternities. Many in the procession will wear capes and peaked hats - they are Nazarenos, representing the people of Nazareth. As in so many Spanish cities, in Granada, the celebration of Passion Week involves everyone in the town. On Wednesday, for example, there is a "Gypsy Procession" in which bonfires are lit in the streets and traditional Spanish songs to the Virgin are sung and on Maundy Thursday, there is a procession in complete silence, every light in the city turned off to mark its solemnity.

In Enna, Sicily, on Good Friday, 2000 friars, dressed in ancient costumes walk in solemn silence through the streets of the city. In Chieti, in Abruzzo, what is believed to be the oldest Good Friday procession takes place, accompanied by the music of Selecchi's Miserere, played on one hundred violins. Holy Week is a time of penitence and identification with suffering but on Easter Sunday, the church bells ring out and there are fiestas all over the country.

In Florence, on Easter Day, a huge, decorated wagon, is pulled through the city by white oxen, to the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, where, following the Easter Mass, the Archbishop sends a dove-shaped rocket into the cart and the whole thing ignites in a blaze of triumphant fireworks.

For most of Catholic Europe, the traditional Easter Sunday dish, marking the end of Lenten abstinence, is lamb - the paschal (sacrificial) lamb both of the Passover and of the crucified Christ. And then there are eggs - in Italy commonly broken into the Lenten thin soup to mark the end of the total abstinence observed by the orthodox over Holy Week. All over Europe, there are egg ceremonies that predate the vast chocolate confections popular today - a legacy probably from the pagan rituals to celebrate the coming of spring (In ancient Persia, people presented each other with eggs to mark the spring equinox). In the north of England, they still hold egg-rolling contests - as they do in Norway where the activity is known as knekke; in many countries, hard-boiled eggs dyed in bright colours are a traditional Easter gift - in Bulgaria they are commonly a deep red after the legend in which St Mary Magdalene allegedly gave a Roman emperor a red-painted egg after he said he considered red eggs a more likely possibility than the Resurrection; in some of the other Orthodox countries, the red egg symbolises the blood of Christ. In Poland, intricately painted eggs are known as pysanki and are painstakingly decorated during Lent, then given as Easter gifts and often kept as heirlooms.

Celebratory food to mark the end of the Lenten fast is still customary in all parts of Christian Europe. For Christians, the week following Easter Sunday is known as "Bright Week" and is a time when all fasting is prohibited. Apart from the lamb dishes which are most common for Easter Sunday, there is Finnish Mammi - a kind of spicy malt porridge pudding commonly eating as an Easter day pudding; in other parts of Scandinavia, herring is typical for the Holy Saturday feast - the last evening of the meatless 40-day fast; in Hungary, ham or sausages, kept from the pig-killing held before Lent, is eaten on Saturday night - with pungent horseradish to ward off evil. In Britain we still eat the distinctive, curranty hot cross buns with a cross marked on top - in fact they are available in supermarkets all year round. They were banned during the Reformation for their dangerous Catholic overtones, but Elizabeth I seeing that the law was impossible to enforce, relented and allowed the buns to be eaten - only on Good Friday and over Easter.

In Poland, Easter celebrations were suppressed under the Communists and so it is not surprising that they are now adhered to with a fervour which is rare in the rest of Europe. On Palm Sunday, it is customary to process to Mass with Easter palms made of branches of pussy willow. In larger towns, the local councillors will carry a statue of Jesus into every church in the town, to symbolise the entry into Jerusalem. After the Easter vigil on Holy Saturday, fathers give each member of their family a basket of food and then eggs; all night, during the vigil, the baskets are taken from church to church where they are blessed - and then shared among the family and the poor to mark the first breakfast of Easter.

A curious custom, thankfully confined to the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, is the tradition of Easter Monday spanking - in which men throw water at women and spank them with special handmade whips made of willow rods. Apparently this is to ensure that they keep their health and beauty until the next spring. Curiously, it is considered an honour to get spanked and an insult to be passed over. The spankee even presents her tormenter with a coloured egg and a small tip to express her gratitude. In Scandinavia, echoes of pagan rites persist in the custom of dressing small children as witches and sending them round neighbouring houses with willow wands - in a kind of version of trick or treating.

© Lucy Lethbridge. All views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to the European Commission.