Happy Easter to all of those celebrating 🙂

A few days ago I did a comparison of Easter traditions with my friend Stephanie, who´s from Ronamia, and we realised there were big differences, starting with the fact that the dates for Catholic Easter and Orthodox Easter are calculated differently, as the former follows the Gregorian calendar, and the latter, the Julian calendar.

But even between countries with a Christian non-Orthodox majority of population (Catholics, Anglicans and other Protestant groups), traditions also vary widely, and I get the impression that those variations have more to do with geography and history than the specific flavour of Christianism practiced there.

For example, when I moved to Ireland, I remember being really surprised at the fact that there were no processions here, despite this being a traditionally Catholic country, like Spain. Out of curiosity, I just asked Google what other countries apart from Spain do processions (parades carrying sculptures of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the Saints, etc.), and the answer was Italy (where we probably got them from, as we did with Nativity scenes), Israel (probably where the original processions took place, in the Holy Places) and several Latin American countries (exported by us Spaniards).

In other locations around the world, like the rest of Europe and the English speaking countries, Easter eggs are the most popular feature, and that´s also true here in Ireland. However, rather than painting real eggs in colourful tones as they do in Romania and many other places, the Irish are more prone to spending their time eating chocolate eggs, after having given up on chocolate and sweets during Lent.

Which brings me to the other question I had to ask Google today: why eggs, precisely? Well, it turns out eggs were always a symbol of fertility and new life, since the old times of Greeks and Egyptians, and from there, they became a symbol of spring. Then, with the arrival of Christianity, eggs became a symbol of Christ´s resurrection, and given that the Church forbade eating eggs during Holy Week, people started decorating them, so that enjoying them on Easter Sunday was an even bigger celebration.

Another detail I find interesting is the origin of the words we use to name this festivity. In Spanish we call it Pascua, in reference to the Jewish festival of Passover, "the passing of the Lord", marking the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. Jesus´s last dinner with his disciples on Holy Thursday was a celebration of the Jewish Passover, so the word got transferred to our Resurrection celebration as well, through Latin and Greek.

But in English, in contrast, the word Easter has a completely different origin: the Christianization of the pagan festival of spring, dedicated to goddess Eostre. Eostre was a goddess worshipped by the Anglo-Saxons, and when the Christian missionaries arrived a the British Isles at the beginning of the Middle Ages, they thought it would be easier to evangelise the land if they adopted the existing religious celebrations, giving them a new Christian meaning.

As you can see, some celebrations originate from others, but at the end of the day, all of them (including the Jewish Passover) were, and still are, celebrations of spring. And they´re not the only ones: about a week ago, we celebrated the Hindu festival of Holi; the festival of colour, love and spring, an explosion of laughter and colour.

And so, we confirm once again that in this life, some themes are universal, and the different cultures and nations express them in different ways: if back in the autumn, when the days were getting shorter, traditions spoke to us about spirits, ghosts and the triumph of light over darkness, now in spring, when the days finally star getting longer again, we celebrate the return of life and the triumph of good over evil.

What about you? What traditions do you follow at this time of the year? How do you celebrate the arrival of spring?