Janice, I, too, have been studying old Easter customs. My version, which is from The Wise Encyclopedia of Cookery, c. 1948, has no ideological axe to grind. But I do think the Christians were a little more celebratory, and the pagans a bit more subdued, than has been represented here earlier:
"Like many other church festivals, Easter is a mixture of both pagan and Christian customs. In old Norse mythology, the day was associated with the spring festival to welcome the return of new birth and awakening in crops and cattle. In fact, the very word "Easter" is derived from an old Saxon word meaning "rising."
Also, in India and China rabbits and eggs were symbols of reproduction and fertility, and were important features of another festival closely corresponding in date to our Easter. Therefore, it required little transition to include these symbols in a Christian festival occurring at the same period of the year.
Every land has quaint customs peculiar to the celebration of Easter. In the northern parts of England, the men once paraded the streets on Easter Sunday and claimed the privilege of lifting any woman they met three times from the ground, then demanding payment in a kiss! Not unlike this, in Old Russia, when the Greek Orthodox Church was very strong, it was a rule that anyone could accost another on the streets on Easter Sunday and give him a triple kiss on the cheeks while saying "Christ Is Risen." Even the poorest peasant might so greet his Tsar. Extinguishing the hearth fire on Holy Saturday at sunset and relighting it with a candle blessed by the church is common in several lands. And the appearance of national dishes noted for their richness and epicurean quality, which have been absent during Lent, are the occasion for much feasting.
Homemakers today vie with one another in decorating Easter eggs and embellishing the family dinner table. Where spring is advanced, as in Italy and the Balkans, the populace takes to the open for their dancing and post-Lenten fetes. Hungary, Austria, Germany are countries where people celebrate the season with songs, merriment, and the exchange of gifts. In Poland, a pig's head, boiled and elaborately decked with flowers, is the principal food on the Easter table. Surrounding it are roast veal and hams, flanked by the popular Polish sausage highly spiced with garlic. Cakes of all kinds, adorned with sprigs of boxwood, are part of a feast that has for its centerpiece a large mold of butter in the shape of the Paschal Lamb; fresh, sweet butter making its appearance in the homes of all but the very wealthy only on important anniversaries.
There used to be an old English superstition that on Easter Sunday the sun danced or leaped as it came up above the horizon; and our forefathers used to get up very early on Easter morning to view the spectacle. Unfortunately the Devil always put a hill in the way, and so nobody ever got a chance to see the miracle.
Corn salad, which is also known as field salad, served with a herring cut in the shape of a man and known as "herring on horseback," was a customary dish in some parts of the world for Easter Day. Sometimes tansy was used to flavor cakes and sometimes it was put into the Easter pudding, which was a "custard greate."
Eggs, hard-cooked and colored, have been exchanged as Easter gifts for many centuries. Sometimes they are designed for eating, but more often for rolling on the green. Sometimes the Easter feast began as soon as the church clock recorded the midnight hour on Saturday. The food for the feast was brought to the church to be blessed.
They roast their flesh and custards
great, and eggs and radish store,
And trifles, clouted creame, and cheese
and whatsoever more,
At first they list to eate, they bring into
the Temple straight
That so the priest may hallow them
with wordes of wond'rous weight."
Great roasts of young lamb, of ham and fowl, turned on the spit, graced the Easter feast, which, following the Lenten abstinence from meat, was as elaborate as means permitted. |
