April 3, 2015 • 44 mins
Easter is one of the most important celebrations in Christianity. So why does it involves a rabbit and painted eggs?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to ghosts and government cover ups, histories where
with unexplained events you can turn back now or learn
the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello, welcome
back to the show. My name is Matt and I
(00:21):
am Ben. We are here with our super producer, uh Noel.
The the where where Rabbit Where? Rabbit Brown? Okay, all right,
you all the where Rabbit Brown? Excellent? Excellent. Well, it's
good to see you where Mr Rabbit And uh, you know,
it's good to see that you and I are here
(00:41):
safe in the audio studio with Noel. We found him,
found all these mics again and all the equipment, the
hard drives were unsmashed. Uh, Ladies and gentlemen. We played
a bit of an April Fools prank that we hope
you enjoyed. It seemed like most people enjoyed it. I think,
so there's a bit of a I guess it was
(01:02):
a warm reception. I there were some comments that didn't
make it to the page. Oh, well, yeah, that can happen,
but we do. We do appreciate everyone, uh, everyone playing
along with us there and not ruining the surprise for
some other people. I thought I saw some especially clever
Tossino and spaghetti references which we could people suggesting where
(01:27):
we could hide amongst the spaghetti trees, which all came
from a brilliant idea on your part, Matt. And it's
strange just April Fools in general, before we get into
what the show is about today. April Fools in general
is not something that I'm the biggest fan of because
I think it can go too far, you know, sure,
and you can have fun with it as well. I
(01:49):
think a lot of companies do. I saw Google made
the actual cloud app or whatever it was the I
forget what exactly what the video was, but Google came
out with a thing this year about the actual cloud.
That's I haven't seen that yet. It was just the
idea that they're storing information on an actual, actual cloud.
(02:09):
At the end, there's a spoiler alert. Sorry, there's a
man and his daughter staring and looking at the clouds
and the father is explaining to the child about what
the cloud is and what it does. And at the end,
as it goes to the title screen, the little girls
just like, oh okay, that's uh yeah, nobody tell Wilhelm
(02:30):
Reich and the Oregon crew. I always wanted a cloud
buster just just to have that would be dangerous as
a thing at my house. Uh. Yeah. April Fool's Day
is interesting because it came about sort of as um
a result or symptom of some arguments regarding calendars, right,
(02:52):
and what we are talking about today is also something
that has a chronological debate dogging it calendar's play in
big It is one of the most important holidays, holy
days technically, we'll take it back to the proper etymology,
one of the most important holy days in the Christian sphere.
(03:17):
Every denomination celebrates this, maybe not on the same day,
maybe not in the same way, but it is a
big deal. Absolutely. The events celebrated in the life of
Jesus Christ on this day are the perhaps the crux
of the religion. Yeah, and this, of course, as as
you all know, probably by now is Easter. We're talking
(03:40):
about Easter, the commemoration of the day that Christians believe
Jesus Christ, after his crucifixion, was resurrected and returned to
the living. And thankfully we work for a company called
how Stuff Works, and we've got wonderful articles that go
into just long detail in this stuff. So we're gonna
(04:04):
be talking at least partly, if not a lot. We're
gonna speaking to you from an article called how Easter
Works on how stuff Works dot com right by a
writer named John Airy who did who did a bang
up job. So the first things we need to know
about Easter, um, the very first basic thing. It's super old.
(04:24):
It is very, very very old. The stuff that is
part of Easter, uh does pre date the time of Christ.
So we already know what Easter is today. Maybe that's
the best way to start. What what what happens today? Sure,
when you think of Easter nowadays in the modern twenty
fifteen world, you think about candy, think about jelly Bean's
(04:48):
Easter eggs. You know, a bunch of colorful eggs and
the dyes that go with them. This for me, the
smell of the vinegar die. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I remember that really well as a child. Let's see bunnies.
Everything about bunnies, even the baskets that you'll see little
children's walking around with, very cute. Um. But you know,
(05:09):
it's not just a commercial venture. That's not what Easter is.
It's not a festival for Hallmark and Kroger in all
these places. Yeah, yeah, it's uh according to like Encyclopedias
Miriam Webster Encyclopedia Britannica. Uh, it is a Christian church
festival celebrating, as we said, the return of Jesus Christ
to life following his death or ultimately defined as the
(05:33):
Sunday in early spring on which this festival is observed.
We said, that's the central festival of the church. But
it's also uh the oldest one, second oldest one excuse me, yes,
observance of the Sabbath would be number one there. And
unlike unlike festivals that you would other Christian festivals that
(05:53):
you would think of that are very important, like Christmas,
Easter has been celebrated without interruption since the times of
the New Testament. Yeah. Uh. And the second big thing
to know as we go into this is that schedule wise,
Easter is complicated. So okay, let's just go into this.
(06:14):
This is from Britannica Encyclopedia Britannica. Western Christians celebrate Easter
on that first Sunday after the full moon, which is
the Paschal moon. Now that occurs on or next after
the vernal equinox in March one. And if the Paschal
moon which is calculated from the system of golden numbers.
(06:36):
And it's a little complicated here, but it doesn't necessarily
Easter Sunday doesn't necessarily coincide with an astronomical full moon,
which occurs on a Sunday. Easter is just the following Sunday, right, Yeah,
that's all confusing to me. Yeah. Right, So we're talking
about two different kinds of moons. There's a lunar calendar,
(06:59):
which is uh which we can get into a little
bit in more detail. But there's a there's the real
full moon, the one you walk outside and see in
the darkness, and then there is the scheduled the clindrical
if I can make up word moon. So the U. S.
Naval Observatories Astronomical Applications Department put some work into this,
(07:23):
and they've come to the conclusion that Easter is determined
by what's called the ecclesiastical moon, that would be the
calendar moon, right, and that's defined by these church constructed tables,
timetables that are permanently supposed to be used for calculating
the full or the phase of the full moon. This
full moon, as we said, isn't necessarily the same thing.
(07:45):
And this means that Easter is not necessarily the Sunday
after a full moon. It could just be the next
Sunday after the ecclesiastical moon. Here's the weird thing, Easter.
It means that Easter doesn't necessarily fall in the same
day every year. There's a fair wide range. I think
it's March until was it a yeah, yeah, it's a
(08:06):
movable feast. That that's the technical phrase and I and
I enjoyed that phrase. Uh yeah, this uh, this date
you were talking about, this date range was decreed by
a pope, right, yes, uh, Pope Gregory the in fifteen
eighty two, and he'd made this or this was decreed
as a part of the Gregorian calendar, the changes that
(08:27):
are recurring in the calendar up until that day. Okay,
And in New Testament times, the Christian Church celebrated Easter
when people of the Jewish faith were observing Passover. By
the middle of the second century, though this moved Easter,
that is, moved to the Sunday after Passover. Uh. And
they the Council of nice Ceo, which we have talked
(08:47):
about many times. One of the decisions they made, and
I was way back in three a d or c e.
Which if you always open up that old can of worms, right,
that all churches should celebrate the Easter together on a Sunday. However,
there's a big difference here between the Western Christian world
(09:11):
and the Eastern Christian world. Yeah, Eastern Orthodox Church it
may even celebrate Easter up to a month afterwards, which
it's interesting in the calculation of the data is based
on the Julian calendar for them, which is very different
from from the other one, the Gregorian calendar, which is
thirteen days behind, which is interesting. So Julian is thirteen
(09:34):
days behind the Gregorian. So perhaps you know there's some
difference there, right, there is some scheduling here. I don't
know if you could call it a huge controversy. It
was indeed historically a source of of enormous controversy. But
the the churches seem to have adopted a a sort
(09:56):
of live and let live attitude, you know. Yeah, And
ultimately maybe this is correct me if you think I'm
just being way too I don't know. I don't know
casual about this, but it is a festival to celebrate something.
For me, it isn't necessarily important if it gets on
the exact correct day. It just seems as though it's
(10:18):
important that it's celebrated on a yearly basis. I see
what you're saying. They're probably there are probably quite a
few people who feel that way. But the fact of
the matter is today, in modern times, we don't have
a lot of people, you know, traveling to an Eastern
Orthodox church to protest at the time that they celebrate Easter.
So let's talk about the actual day, right, Um, So
(10:42):
we've already um, we've already talked about some of this stuff. Um,
we do know that when this Sunday occurs, whenever it
does actually occur, it's uh, it's going to be celebrated
in different ways throughout the world or even from country
to country. In the United States, there's often a thing
(11:03):
called the Sunrise Service, Right. I've been to many of
those in my day, that's true. Yeah, yeah, you have.
I remember you mentioning some of these What what's that about? Well,
it was just, if I recall correctly, if I recall correctly, um,
we would go out to well, we had our church
fairly close to a lake, and we would go out
(11:24):
to this little chapel on the lake that was in
an exterior chapel. It was just pews that were outside
and we would as the sun would rise. It was
almost symbolic of Jesus resurrecting the sun itself, the s
U n right. Yes. And also um, the arrival in
Jerusalem before sunrise on that Sunday of his resurrection. Here's
(11:46):
an interesting fact that um, some people might not know.
It might be surprising to some of our listeners here
matt Uh. Easter was not celebrated or mentioned in the Bible. No,
it is not mentioned in the Bible. This this the
three days here, the three day period Good Friday, when
Jesus was observed too or thought to be killed then buried,
(12:10):
then on Easter Sunday, three days later, rose from the dead,
got out of the stone, moved, and he was gone. Um.
That is more of a not modern Christian but post
Bible writing Christianity. I see uh. And it's actually at
least it's not mentioned as Easter, you know, in the
(12:31):
in the Biblical text. It's it's important for us to
say and and maybe we should have mentioned something about
this at the top, that when we when we talk
about these sorts of topics, these articles of faith, we're
we're not making any value or judgment call about what
(12:51):
you or your friends or your enemies or the people
you see on the street. Um, believe that's not really
our place. But what we can do, and what what
we are going to do, is look into the origins
of Easter, the possible origins of Easter as the event
it is today, So you know, counting for example, the
(13:15):
rabbit and the eggs and and and that sort of stuff. Um,
we're not in any way, uh, saying that we're going
to bust some story, but it is interesting to us
that there there's such controversy even today over how this started.
So it's pretty immediate when you look at just the
(13:36):
history of it, right yeah, Yeah, A lot of people
don't agree about the origins of Easter, which should be
no surprise. You often hear it attributed to a couple
of things. One would be pre existing religious rights, particularly
spring festivals and fertility rituals. Right yeah. A lot of
people would say these are pagan rituals. That's inside quotes
(13:58):
if you couldn't tell that, which again, pagan is a
loaded term. I used to hear that a lot, and
I still do hear the word pagan a lot. And
it doesn't seem to be referencing anything besides non monotheistic, right. Yeah,
it's interesting when when we hear the way that word
(14:18):
is used often as sort of a pejorative or derogatory,
you know. And then there are neo Pagans who consciously
identify themselves as pagans. And then there are people who
feel like that's very disrespectful. You know, don't call me
a pagan for instance, I am a Wiccan or something
like that. Um. And you know, listeners, I know that
(14:39):
a lot of us out there are hearing stuff like
that and saying, well, I don't want to be offensive,
but what's the right term? Correct? So, so the the idea,
there's this, there's this one idea that's very popular that
the um celebration of Easter is based on an older
worship of a goddess, a Saxon goddess. And you'll hear this,
(15:05):
you'll hear this get thrown around. Is the definite truth,
the stuff they don't want you to know about Easter celebrations.
But when you trace back this claim, it all goes
back to one guy who's got a great name, the
Venerable Beddy B. E. D. E. Yeah, and uh, he
wrote this thing called the Reckoning of Time in eighth
(15:26):
in the eighth century, and he states that um Anglo
Saxon's during a a month that was roughly around April
called uh who here we go yo stan up I
probably butchered that, but uh, but he he states that
there were these feast held in in honor of this
(15:49):
goddess uh spelled e O s t r e Easter Ouster,
but that this tradition died out and it was replaced
by this Christian tradition, this Pascal month, Pascal month um,
which you know, as we say, is the celebration of
the resurrection of Christ. So this guy venerable though he
(16:14):
maybe it is the only source of this claim apparently,
and uh you can find various historians saying that not
only was the only source of it, but they think
he made it up or he you know, perhaps it's
just tough to prove it right, right, Yeah, we didn't
have the kind of record keeping that we have today.
(16:36):
But also you know, we see this kind of um
parallel of things happen often. Uh. You know, just look
at the various Messianic figures who have had stories very
similar to what we would recognize as the modern life
(16:57):
and death cycle, life, death and rebirth cycle of Jesus Christ.
You know, so there are it's it's fascinating stuff. And
and one of our coworkers, Joe McCormick on Forward Thinking,
is a bit of a scholar with this kind of stuff,
so we we usually check in with him on this
before we do something. Joe, if you're listening, we're doing
(17:17):
our best. We will ask for your health retroactively, right, Yeah,
We'll just will change the calendar so that this comes
out on a different day. There's there's this other idea.
So so that's one idea, the idea that it's based
on an earlier quote pagan festival. Uh, there's the second idea,
(17:38):
which you also hear, that it is a purely Christian tradition,
that this is a that this is a solely original
Christian thing. And then you'll see, um, you know, you
will see different people arguing this, I would say, with
varying levels of persuasiveness. However, at this point, the um,
(18:03):
the secular truth of the matter is that the historians
and the researchers aren't bearing that out there finding um,
they're finding an evolution and revolution is a good way
to put it. We this is the same thing we
found when we were researching Christmas. How it just these
these holidays and celebratory feasts and stuff like that really
(18:26):
do seem to have evolved over time as religions, religions
and faith started meeting each other in the world, as
various faith started growing, and it kind of just became okay, well,
here are these set days where we can celebrate the
thing that we need to celebrate, UM, and we'll focus
it around this day because we all kind of already
had these days just because everybody had not the same calendar,
(18:49):
but they were looking at the same moon, right, everybody's
looking at the same sun and where it's going, and
how everything's changing in the world during cycles. It's very interesting.
Well and and also you know, it occurs to me,
Matt that maybe evolved as a loaded term for me
to check. But but there is there is this UM
(19:10):
I think incredibly inspiring and continual struggle that the entire
human species has been doing since we got into this
counting thing, and that's trying to remember the past and
when things happened, UH, such that we can predict when
things will occur again equinoxes, right, um, so, so much
(19:32):
of our early knowledge is astronomical. Uh, there's there's this
third one that we've kind of mentioned that it was
a tradition based on the pre existing Jewish Passover. And
here's something that throws a little bit of salt or shade,
whichever you preferred. Slaying is on the idea of this
(19:53):
Anglo Saxon goddess. The word for Easter in most non
English languages is based on the Pascal the p A
S c H a l root word Latin and Greek,
so it doesn't it doesn't seem as likely in other countries. Now,
(20:15):
of course, this this linguistic pattern doesn't give us a
clear origin point yet for for the the timing of
the celebration. Right, yeah, you there are there are people
who get degrees based very closely in just studying root
words like that and Greek words. They go back and
(20:38):
trying to analyze these ancient texts. So don't take it
from Ben and I. These are just the things we
have observed and researched. So when when we talk about
this stuff, when we talk about Easter, one of the
things that we have to talk about are the various
symbols that in modern times have become associate ated with this, right, Yeah,
(21:02):
one of the things you've heard and I remember hearing
this term first from uh song. I think it was
like a schoolyard song that we used to sing in
preschool about hot cross buns. And according to this book
dates and meanings of religious and other festivals, hot cross
buns that used to be kept specifically for Good Friday,
(21:24):
with the symbolism obviously of the cross, although it's thought
that the hot cross buns originated prior, you know, before
main mainstream Christian times, I guess pagan times. Um, the
bun represents the moon and its four quarters. That's what
that's the idea of the hot cross buns. So you've
got bun and then this, I think the pictures I've
(21:47):
seen or have a white cross on the center of it.
So then you've got the four quadrants or stages of
the moon. Yes, yeah, that which is which is fascinating
to me, because I had no idea that was true.
That the custom there apparently tracing back to when people
who worshiped Zeus would bake a cake in the form
(22:09):
of a bull with a cross upon it to represent
its horns. That's difficult than it sounds. You know. Have
you ever tried to shape something and bake it, not
without some kind of mold, not without some kind of mold.
I have tried and failed multiple times. I've made just
gingerbread abominations. Uh, there were there's some things that man
or at least this guy was not meant to make.
(22:31):
Um and this is bread to right, Yes, yeah, so
the the thing that is a hot cross bun now
was a talisman of sorts, right, and that's this fascinating.
People would hang buns from their kitchen ceilings to protect
their households from evil for the rest of the year.
And yeah, uh, and they were baked so much that
(22:55):
they didn't really get moldy as much as you would,
you know, because I know what people to think, right,
you're thinking, so you hang these pieces of bread that
become mold in your house has that funky smell. It's
hard to place until you like look up and oh man,
that green stuff is probably not good precious mold. No.
(23:17):
Another thing, while we're on the subject of food, there's
typically an Easter feast of some sort, and this can
be super elaborate It can change depending on which country
you go to. Often people will have an Easter ham.
For instance, Um, that was my family. We would we
would always get a honey baked ham. Oh wow, I'm
(23:38):
such a middle class white kid, aren't it? What is what?
Why are you beating yourself up? I can just I
can see, I can see my family and I are
going to get our our ham for Easter? What kind
of sides did you guys make? We didn't cook, man, Oh,
you just got the sides from honey baked ham. That's
so sad. No, seriously, man, don't don't yourself up over that.
(24:01):
I think feast in general are amazing things. I'm down for.
Not that I did not love that brown sugarcoating on
that ham. Oh my goodness, it sounds good. I mean
hungry thinking about it. And and let's, you know, while
we're while we're talking about food, let's get to the
big one, right, the easter eggs? What? Why? Yeah? Even
(24:24):
as even as a child, at quite a young age,
I'm sure I wasn't the only one. I'm sure a
lot of you listeners were saying, so wait, Although we
are celebrating this very important day for the most important
person or the son of God. Uh, there's also an
(24:45):
anthropomorphic rabbit that lays eggs. I don't think about it. Then.
All I have to say is I have vivid memories
of running around my churchyard in Shambly, Georgia and finding
Easter eggs as a kid. I vivid memories of that
and how much fun I had. Yeah, Easter egg hunts
(25:07):
are really fun. It's cool and it gets people. Also,
it gets people to associate the day if they're you know,
if they're not into them more the belief system behind it, right,
then it gets people, to children at least, to associate
the day with a lot of fun, really good stuff exactly,
(25:27):
and then you start learning about it as you get
Older's perfect idea. Here's one of the coolest things about
this though, What's that we found that this whole dying
of Easter eggs thing isn't something that was come up
with for, you know, to sell more die originally. This
is an ancient thing, and you know that sounds bad,
but a lot of the times traditions that we found,
(25:50):
some traditions in the modern way have some kind of
profit motive behind them. Some of the ones that we've
looked at it's really nice to know that this one,
at least originally isn't so if you if you go
way back to ancient times when the Egyptians and Persians
were running around. Uh well, Egyptians and Persians and ancient times,
uh uh, these two exchange dyed eggs with friends. Okay.
(26:15):
And it was in Mesotamia that Christians first gave eggs
to their friends at Easter to remind them of the
resurrection of Jesus as a little token of remembrance. Okay,
that makes sense that that comes from the author Rowland pertain.
So all the way back to Mesopotamia. There is a
modern industry now around dyeing eggs, but there was also
(26:36):
a practice there. It's it's uh interesting too, because you know,
an egg is symbolically it's very much a symbol of fertility,
don't you think. Oh yeah, So centuries ago, when Lent
ended on Easter Sunday, it became tradition for people to
give these decorated eggs as presents to their friends and servants.
(26:57):
Right and over time, this tradition in its continued, and
there there are some Eastern European regions, particularly in Ukraine,
where people are known for their beautiful and intricate, elaborate,
ornate egg designs. Right, oh, yeah, it's just beautiful looking
stuff there. Uh. It is weird ben to me that
(27:20):
an egg that you would use to die, that you'd
buy the store and then used to die for Easter.
It's supposed to be a symbol of fertility, but really
it's a perfect symbol of infertility because it's the result
of not being fertilized. Well, yeah, I guess you're right.
I never thought about that. Yeah, if it were actually
the fertility, there would be a chicken there and you'd
(27:40):
have to take it back and give it to the
mama chicken. This is a total side note. Have you
ever heard of ballut? No? So, ballut is this thing.
It's a it's a it's in the Philippines. It's a
snag where it's a they fertilize hank and they cook
(28:01):
it and you you know when you buy a crack,
open the shell and you eat up the embryo. Basically,
no worries. Man, I had one, did you really? Yeah?
Was it any good? I'm not eating him now, that's
for sure. And I don't know how much of that
is just a reaction to texture. You know what I mean.
(28:22):
But you know that has nothing to do with anything
except check it out listeners if you haven't heard of
that already. Side note, it is traditionally balute is traditionally
considered an aphrodesiac. I don't know why. I cannot speak
for the results. Maybe it's kind of like watching horror
films where you're just so freaked out by the experience
(28:43):
that you seek comfort that your nervous system just gives
you the fight or flight. So the tradition of giving
eggs to friends and associates towards the end of Lent
is according to Snopes we looked into this, eggs were
one of the foods forbidden during Lent. So Easter. Uh,
(29:04):
in Easter egg was like a special treat, a reward
of sorts and uh you know, the the candy Easter
eggs of the modern times go back to another another
more serious purpose in earlier Christianity, when hard boiled eggs
were dyed red in memory of blood of Jesus Christ
(29:24):
blood and given to children again to help to preserve
their health. Okay, so like you could get a hot
cross bun in the house, an egg for the kid
and that that um. Not Again, all of these things
vary a little bit across cultures. Um. They're also we've
(29:47):
talked about some traditional foods, so let's talk about some
traditional activities, right, So we talked about the sunrise services
held outside. Let's see, let's stroll on the world, shall we.
All right, well, let's head over to Bulgaria. In Bulgaria,
people don't hide eggs. They have egg fights. Ben. That
(30:08):
sounds like fun and like a lot of work for
mom and dad in the morning or you know later
that evening when you gotta clean everything up. Um. So
here here's the thing. Whoever comes out of the game
with an unbroken egg is the winner and assumed to
be the most successful member in the family for the
coming year. So it's a nice omen or. And what
(30:30):
is the opposite of an omen? Uh, the opposite. You
could have a good omen You have good omen, then
it's a good omen for the family for that family member.
In another tradition, the oldest woman in the family will
take the faces of the little children and then rub
them with the first red egg she's colored, and that
(30:50):
will symbolize her wish that they have rosy cheeks. Health
and strength. And in Mexico we head on over to Mexico.
Then we find that children will smash traditionally smash eggs
over each other's heads in the week before Lent. Uh.
These eggs are filled with small pieces of paper rather
than raw egg So that's very nice again like people
(31:14):
thinking about mom and dad and we gotta do. In Germany,
eggs are dyed green on Monday Thursday. Yeah. This is
always between nine uh, the nineteenth of March and the
twenty two of April. Uh. It could be on different
days depending on the Gregorian or Julian calendar. Used. It's
the you're right, that was the Thursday before Easter, and
(31:37):
it commemorates the last Supper of Jesus Christ. And it's
called Mandate Thursday because I also commemorates that washing of
the feet. Uh m a U d y Yes, yeah,
that's the one uh. And this is something that is
(31:58):
bigger in other countries. It's not the biggest thing in
the United States. At least in Greece. There's a public
procession in Easter parade and these red eggs are tapped
together while people have a call and response chant. In
the US, there are some parades, the oldest being the
one at Atlantic City, and uh, the best one maybe
(32:23):
being the one in New York, which is often how
it goes with parades, the Fifth Avenue one, it's pretty awesome.
And uh, in England there's a thing called the hair
pie scramble and bottle kicking. Okay, that sounds fun, all right,
what's what's the story behind? Well, the story goes that
a woman was saved by hair running across the path
(32:45):
of a bull. So that's kind of interesting and possibly
symbolic on Easter Monday. On Easter Monday, hundreds of years ago. Now,
as a token of her appreciation, she bequeathed a piece
of land to the rector. And it's important to know
that the soul condition for this giving of the land
was that the rector have a hair pie made, h
(33:07):
a r e pie made to be distributed to all
the parishioners together with a large quantity of ale every
year for a feast. I mean that sounds cool. I
would be so down for that hair pie. Yeah, whichund
is horrible, right, yes, but it's it's fortunate for us,
Matt that it brings us to one of the biggest
characters for this time of the year, and that is
(33:31):
the Easter rabbit, the Easter bunny, the Easter bunny. Yes, yeah,
it sounds like an old, long time favorite. Years Yeah, yeah,
I was a big fan. I had I think I
had a stuffed bunny, large stuffed bunny. Did you ever
see that website where it's just pictures of scary looking
Easter bunnies I have. I think we looked at that
(33:53):
together while never going back to that. You I go
back there just to check it out. Um. Right, So this,
this creature also not mentioned in this form in a
biblical text, but rabbits, like eggs are powerful symbols traditionally
of fertility and new life and and therefore an Easter ceremony.
(34:18):
You know this, this Easter bunny, like Santa Claus or St. Nick,
has become a popular children's character. Uh the year round.
Really you can see Easter Bunny. I don't know, it's
in the it's in the zeitgeist. You know, it's not
weird for there to be an Easter bunny sketch on
your favorite comedy show. But it could be that this
(34:41):
is sort of a historical mistake. Because Snope tells us
the all manner of rabbits are said to lay eggs
on Easter Day. Hold on what, Yeah, you're telling me
that rabbits lay eggs are said to you know, you
gotta be very careful with the language there. And that's
like the pursuit of happiness that's continued. So the the
(35:08):
hair itself always seen pre Christian times associated with fertility,
the returning spring and similar to the study of the
groundhog shadow on Groundhog Day, movements of the hair, because
originally was a hair, movements of the hair were as
(35:29):
seen as portents are possibly omens um ways to figure
out what would be happening in the coming year. So
the hair itself is uh. Hairs and rabbits are often
confused hairs and bunnies, and the hair is a larger
(35:50):
version with with some distinct differences. They're they're different animals.
They're not synonyms. But the Easter bunny is the is
the US go to, right, Yeah, the cute little hoppy
hoppy bunny. Yeah. So he shows up in the sixteenth
century literature as a deliverer of eggs um in his
(36:11):
own way in springtime. St. Nicholas bent On, you know,
rewarding the good would give out his candy and the
special treats in the shoes, and there are all kinds
of traditions with that. The little bunny then goes around
and gives out colored eggs, but only to the good
kids exactly, only ones get cold eggs. I guess I
(36:33):
don't know. I've never I guess I was never that
bad of a kid. I soiled eggs. Oh that's unfair,
and you never know until you crack it open. Oh man,
that would that would ruin a child's spring. Yeah, it's
a fortune cookie. But so this this um Easter bunny stuff,
this is German in origin. Um leading back to kind
(36:57):
of what the venerable bed it was saying, uh hairs
were sacred to uh the different festivals and arguably to
this festival of uh the goddess Easter, which again still
a subject of debate for people. But at some point
the hair was replaced by the rabbit. And that's because
(37:19):
well common conjectures, because just they're hard to tell apart.
Was just well, well just you we got a rabbit.
That's fine, And I can imagine in a pinch and
you're trying to get your Easter celebration ready. Nobody will
know it's a rabbit. Yeah, nobody will know. So here
is the I guess it's time for us to say
the big secret, which we've talked about and is is
(37:40):
similar to some of the stuff we saw a Christmas
and some of the stuff we saw on our Halloween episode,
and that is modern day Easter celebrations are a kind
of religious syncretism. What's religious syncretism? That's kind of what
I was mentioning earlier, when it's different religions borrowing from
one in our faiths borrowing from one another, or kind
(38:02):
of congealing into one one particular celebration or one particular holiday,
or one particular belief kind of like how we've talked
about folk saints in earlier episodes. We had, um the
experiences I had with sin Simon and marshamon right, and uh,
maybe more recent, more recent example of religious syncretism would
(38:25):
be the followers of Santam Buerte in Mexico and the
Southwest United States. Uh, this is a folk saint who
is um sort of female patron of death and not
you know, not necessarily an evil or a bad thing
at all, just passing right as the spirit goes right.
(38:49):
So you know, religions, like people do not exist in
a vacuum, at least historically. And and so although this
though from our perspective, right, humans live a very short
amount of time in comparison to the amount of time
our species is around or even civilization. So it may
(39:10):
seem that none of the things that we see every year,
that our long held traditions are changing. But the truth
is that over time they do seem to change. Um,
they adapt to other cultures, different practices or traditions take hold.
And this is something that has kind of happened with
(39:31):
Easter eggs and with the rabbit. Yeah, exactly. You can
look back to those early Christian times to see the
the spring fertility rights and rituals that you can bring
in with the Easter eggs. Like we said, the eggs,
the rabbits, the hairs, um. A lot of this goes
back to that stuff. And for obvious reasons. You know,
(39:54):
these are fertility symbols. We're talking about springtime, right, yes, uh,
the symbolic resurrection of the world after the death of
the symbolic death of winter. And you can go back
further and find you know, stories of um gods who
are you know, like vegetative gods who died with the
(40:16):
harvest and were born again. And this is not in
any way invalidate, of course, the story of Easter or
dilute it. It's um, it's for makes it richer. Yeah,
well that's cool because there's this long history of this
kind of thing. I don't know that's what I see
at least, so it's uh, it's interesting. Though. One thing
(40:37):
we do know for sure is that, uh, the United
States was, in comparison to Europe at the time when
people are celebrating this stuff, they were the ones who
substituted the rabbit, the bunny rabbit for the hair, because
we just have more rabbits. Yeah, more rabbits. And you know,
it looks better on a postcard or in an ad
(41:00):
if you're having an Easter sale or something like that,
you have a cute little money that you just want
to reach out and touch and pet instead of this
hair that's you know, maybe standing up on its back legs. Right. Yeah,
So here's our here's our ultimate verdict of of what
people know now. And there's an exciting thing too, we
(41:22):
have to mention towards the end. Uh, despite the controversy
over its origins. It's indisputable Easter remains one of the
most important celebrations or again holy days in the Christian
experience right and along the way in its formation it
acquired primarily in terms of symbols, It acquired other pre
(41:43):
existing uh, symbols and traditions, right, And this doesn't invalidate it.
But those things, some of them, especially the rabbit, were
around beforehand. Uh. The nature of their existence beforehand, other
than saying fertility rights, is still somewhat nebulous. You'll hear
(42:04):
a lot of people claim that they have figured it
out right, but man, perhaps they have, but at this
point there's not a universally agreed origin of these practices
and the ways in which they melded to form the
the festival that is celebrated today. Yeah. I just want
(42:29):
to say I have so many great memories still of Easter,
and it makes me this podcast is making me want
to go visit my parents on Easter and go to
church with them, just to go do the whole thing.
Get my ham, really, I really want that ham. Now
are they going to get a ham? This year? And
you think, I hope? So I can only assume it's
(42:50):
been a while since I've done Easter with them. But yeah,
I go and try to bring my mom something. You know,
I'm gonna I'm gonna call them. I'm glad that you
do that and you bring something to your mom. That's
very nice. But I'm gonna call right after this. So
we are concluding our podcast day. We hope that this
look at some of the hidden origins of Easter symbols
(43:14):
has has been at least interesting. And with that, you guys,
thank you so much for listening. We hope that you
have enjoyed our episode on the hidden meaning of Easter symbols.
If you would like to learn more, please do check
out some of our videos we have coming up. Definitely
go to how stuff works dot com. Check out that
how Easter Works article and then just pruis around that thing.
(43:37):
It's it's huge how stuff Works and you can find
everything there. There's some neat stuff too. There's some good
articles and a couple of my favorite writers on the
site get weird with it. Yeah they do, Yeah, they do,
especially our buddies Josh Clark, Jonathan Strickland, Robert Lamb's. Yeah.
So if you're into weird, which assume you are, for
(44:00):
checking out our show, then you will enjoy that and
many more articles if you would like to hear every
podcast we've ever done and see almost every video that
we've ever done. We have our own website too. It's
stuff they don't want you to know dot com, So
go check us out there, find us on Facebook and Twitter,
And if you don't want to do any of that stuff,
(44:21):
do one simple thing right to us. We are conspiracy
at how stuff Works dot com. From one on this
topic another unexplained phenomenon, visit YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff.
You can also get in touch on Twitter at the
handle at conspiracy stuff
From UFOs to ghosts and government cover ups, histories where
with unexplained events you can turn back now or learn
the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello, welcome
back to the show. My name is Matt and I
(00:21):
am Ben. We are here with our super producer, uh Noel.
The the where where Rabbit Where? Rabbit Brown? Okay, all right,
you all the where Rabbit Brown? Excellent? Excellent. Well, it's
good to see you where Mr Rabbit And uh, you know,
it's good to see that you and I are here
(00:41):
safe in the audio studio with Noel. We found him,
found all these mics again and all the equipment, the
hard drives were unsmashed. Uh, Ladies and gentlemen. We played
a bit of an April Fools prank that we hope
you enjoyed. It seemed like most people enjoyed it. I think,
so there's a bit of a I guess it was
(01:02):
a warm reception. I there were some comments that didn't
make it to the page. Oh, well, yeah, that can happen,
but we do. We do appreciate everyone, uh, everyone playing
along with us there and not ruining the surprise for
some other people. I thought I saw some especially clever
Tossino and spaghetti references which we could people suggesting where
(01:27):
we could hide amongst the spaghetti trees, which all came
from a brilliant idea on your part, Matt. And it's
strange just April Fools in general, before we get into
what the show is about today. April Fools in general
is not something that I'm the biggest fan of because
I think it can go too far, you know, sure,
and you can have fun with it as well. I
(01:49):
think a lot of companies do. I saw Google made
the actual cloud app or whatever it was the I
forget what exactly what the video was, but Google came
out with a thing this year about the actual cloud.
That's I haven't seen that yet. It was just the
idea that they're storing information on an actual, actual cloud.
(02:09):
At the end, there's a spoiler alert. Sorry, there's a
man and his daughter staring and looking at the clouds
and the father is explaining to the child about what
the cloud is and what it does. And at the end,
as it goes to the title screen, the little girls
just like, oh okay, that's uh yeah, nobody tell Wilhelm
(02:30):
Reich and the Oregon crew. I always wanted a cloud
buster just just to have that would be dangerous as
a thing at my house. Uh. Yeah. April Fool's Day
is interesting because it came about sort of as um
a result or symptom of some arguments regarding calendars, right,
(02:52):
and what we are talking about today is also something
that has a chronological debate dogging it calendar's play in
big It is one of the most important holidays, holy
days technically, we'll take it back to the proper etymology,
one of the most important holy days in the Christian sphere.
(03:17):
Every denomination celebrates this, maybe not on the same day,
maybe not in the same way, but it is a
big deal. Absolutely. The events celebrated in the life of
Jesus Christ on this day are the perhaps the crux
of the religion. Yeah, and this, of course, as as
you all know, probably by now is Easter. We're talking
(03:40):
about Easter, the commemoration of the day that Christians believe
Jesus Christ, after his crucifixion, was resurrected and returned to
the living. And thankfully we work for a company called
how Stuff Works, and we've got wonderful articles that go
into just long detail in this stuff. So we're gonna
(04:04):
be talking at least partly, if not a lot. We're
gonna speaking to you from an article called how Easter
Works on how stuff Works dot com right by a
writer named John Airy who did who did a bang
up job. So the first things we need to know
about Easter, um, the very first basic thing. It's super old.
(04:24):
It is very, very very old. The stuff that is
part of Easter, uh does pre date the time of Christ.
So we already know what Easter is today. Maybe that's
the best way to start. What what what happens today? Sure,
when you think of Easter nowadays in the modern twenty
fifteen world, you think about candy, think about jelly Bean's
(04:48):
Easter eggs. You know, a bunch of colorful eggs and
the dyes that go with them. This for me, the
smell of the vinegar die. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I remember that really well as a child. Let's see bunnies.
Everything about bunnies, even the baskets that you'll see little
children's walking around with, very cute. Um. But you know,
(05:09):
it's not just a commercial venture. That's not what Easter is.
It's not a festival for Hallmark and Kroger in all
these places. Yeah, yeah, it's uh according to like Encyclopedias
Miriam Webster Encyclopedia Britannica. Uh, it is a Christian church
festival celebrating, as we said, the return of Jesus Christ
to life following his death or ultimately defined as the
(05:33):
Sunday in early spring on which this festival is observed.
We said, that's the central festival of the church. But
it's also uh the oldest one, second oldest one excuse me, yes,
observance of the Sabbath would be number one there. And
unlike unlike festivals that you would other Christian festivals that
(05:53):
you would think of that are very important, like Christmas,
Easter has been celebrated without interruption since the times of
the New Testament. Yeah. Uh. And the second big thing
to know as we go into this is that schedule wise,
Easter is complicated. So okay, let's just go into this.
(06:14):
This is from Britannica Encyclopedia Britannica. Western Christians celebrate Easter
on that first Sunday after the full moon, which is
the Paschal moon. Now that occurs on or next after
the vernal equinox in March one. And if the Paschal
moon which is calculated from the system of golden numbers.
(06:36):
And it's a little complicated here, but it doesn't necessarily
Easter Sunday doesn't necessarily coincide with an astronomical full moon,
which occurs on a Sunday. Easter is just the following Sunday, right, Yeah,
that's all confusing to me. Yeah. Right, So we're talking
about two different kinds of moons. There's a lunar calendar,
(06:59):
which is uh which we can get into a little
bit in more detail. But there's a there's the real
full moon, the one you walk outside and see in
the darkness, and then there is the scheduled the clindrical
if I can make up word moon. So the U. S.
Naval Observatories Astronomical Applications Department put some work into this,
(07:23):
and they've come to the conclusion that Easter is determined
by what's called the ecclesiastical moon, that would be the
calendar moon, right, and that's defined by these church constructed tables,
timetables that are permanently supposed to be used for calculating
the full or the phase of the full moon. This
full moon, as we said, isn't necessarily the same thing.
(07:45):
And this means that Easter is not necessarily the Sunday
after a full moon. It could just be the next
Sunday after the ecclesiastical moon. Here's the weird thing, Easter.
It means that Easter doesn't necessarily fall in the same
day every year. There's a fair wide range. I think
it's March until was it a yeah, yeah, it's a
(08:06):
movable feast. That that's the technical phrase and I and
I enjoyed that phrase. Uh yeah, this uh, this date
you were talking about, this date range was decreed by
a pope, right, yes, uh, Pope Gregory the in fifteen
eighty two, and he'd made this or this was decreed
as a part of the Gregorian calendar, the changes that
(08:27):
are recurring in the calendar up until that day. Okay,
And in New Testament times, the Christian Church celebrated Easter
when people of the Jewish faith were observing Passover. By
the middle of the second century, though this moved Easter,
that is, moved to the Sunday after Passover. Uh. And
they the Council of nice Ceo, which we have talked
(08:47):
about many times. One of the decisions they made, and
I was way back in three a d or c e.
Which if you always open up that old can of worms, right,
that all churches should celebrate the Easter together on a Sunday. However,
there's a big difference here between the Western Christian world
(09:11):
and the Eastern Christian world. Yeah, Eastern Orthodox Church it
may even celebrate Easter up to a month afterwards, which
it's interesting in the calculation of the data is based
on the Julian calendar for them, which is very different
from from the other one, the Gregorian calendar, which is
thirteen days behind, which is interesting. So Julian is thirteen
(09:34):
days behind the Gregorian. So perhaps you know there's some
difference there, right, there is some scheduling here. I don't
know if you could call it a huge controversy. It
was indeed historically a source of of enormous controversy. But
the the churches seem to have adopted a a sort
(09:56):
of live and let live attitude, you know. Yeah, And
ultimately maybe this is correct me if you think I'm
just being way too I don't know. I don't know
casual about this, but it is a festival to celebrate something.
For me, it isn't necessarily important if it gets on
the exact correct day. It just seems as though it's
(10:18):
important that it's celebrated on a yearly basis. I see
what you're saying. They're probably there are probably quite a
few people who feel that way. But the fact of
the matter is today, in modern times, we don't have
a lot of people, you know, traveling to an Eastern
Orthodox church to protest at the time that they celebrate Easter.
So let's talk about the actual day, right, Um, So
(10:42):
we've already um, we've already talked about some of this stuff. Um,
we do know that when this Sunday occurs, whenever it
does actually occur, it's uh, it's going to be celebrated
in different ways throughout the world or even from country
to country. In the United States, there's often a thing
(11:03):
called the Sunrise Service, Right. I've been to many of
those in my day, that's true. Yeah, yeah, you have.
I remember you mentioning some of these What what's that about? Well,
it was just, if I recall correctly, if I recall correctly, um,
we would go out to well, we had our church
fairly close to a lake, and we would go out
(11:24):
to this little chapel on the lake that was in
an exterior chapel. It was just pews that were outside
and we would as the sun would rise. It was
almost symbolic of Jesus resurrecting the sun itself, the s
U n right. Yes. And also um, the arrival in
Jerusalem before sunrise on that Sunday of his resurrection. Here's
(11:46):
an interesting fact that um, some people might not know.
It might be surprising to some of our listeners here
matt Uh. Easter was not celebrated or mentioned in the Bible. No,
it is not mentioned in the Bible. This this the
three days here, the three day period Good Friday, when
Jesus was observed too or thought to be killed then buried,
(12:10):
then on Easter Sunday, three days later, rose from the dead,
got out of the stone, moved, and he was gone. Um.
That is more of a not modern Christian but post
Bible writing Christianity. I see uh. And it's actually at
least it's not mentioned as Easter, you know, in the
(12:31):
in the Biblical text. It's it's important for us to
say and and maybe we should have mentioned something about
this at the top, that when we when we talk
about these sorts of topics, these articles of faith, we're
we're not making any value or judgment call about what
(12:51):
you or your friends or your enemies or the people
you see on the street. Um, believe that's not really
our place. But what we can do, and what what
we are going to do, is look into the origins
of Easter, the possible origins of Easter as the event
it is today, So you know, counting for example, the
(13:15):
rabbit and the eggs and and and that sort of stuff. Um,
we're not in any way, uh, saying that we're going
to bust some story, but it is interesting to us
that there there's such controversy even today over how this started.
So it's pretty immediate when you look at just the
(13:36):
history of it, right yeah, Yeah, A lot of people
don't agree about the origins of Easter, which should be
no surprise. You often hear it attributed to a couple
of things. One would be pre existing religious rights, particularly
spring festivals and fertility rituals. Right yeah. A lot of
people would say these are pagan rituals. That's inside quotes
(13:58):
if you couldn't tell that, which again, pagan is a
loaded term. I used to hear that a lot, and
I still do hear the word pagan a lot. And
it doesn't seem to be referencing anything besides non monotheistic, right. Yeah,
it's interesting when when we hear the way that word
(14:18):
is used often as sort of a pejorative or derogatory,
you know. And then there are neo Pagans who consciously
identify themselves as pagans. And then there are people who
feel like that's very disrespectful. You know, don't call me
a pagan for instance, I am a Wiccan or something
like that. Um. And you know, listeners, I know that
(14:39):
a lot of us out there are hearing stuff like
that and saying, well, I don't want to be offensive,
but what's the right term? Correct? So, so the the idea,
there's this, there's this one idea that's very popular that
the um celebration of Easter is based on an older
worship of a goddess, a Saxon goddess. And you'll hear this,
(15:05):
you'll hear this get thrown around. Is the definite truth,
the stuff they don't want you to know about Easter celebrations.
But when you trace back this claim, it all goes
back to one guy who's got a great name, the
Venerable Beddy B. E. D. E. Yeah, and uh, he
wrote this thing called the Reckoning of Time in eighth
(15:26):
in the eighth century, and he states that um Anglo
Saxon's during a a month that was roughly around April
called uh who here we go yo stan up I
probably butchered that, but uh, but he he states that
there were these feast held in in honor of this
(15:49):
goddess uh spelled e O s t r e Easter Ouster,
but that this tradition died out and it was replaced
by this Christian tradition, this Pascal month, Pascal month um,
which you know, as we say, is the celebration of
the resurrection of Christ. So this guy venerable though he
(16:14):
maybe it is the only source of this claim apparently,
and uh you can find various historians saying that not
only was the only source of it, but they think
he made it up or he you know, perhaps it's
just tough to prove it right, right, Yeah, we didn't
have the kind of record keeping that we have today.
(16:36):
But also you know, we see this kind of um
parallel of things happen often. Uh. You know, just look
at the various Messianic figures who have had stories very
similar to what we would recognize as the modern life
(16:57):
and death cycle, life, death and rebirth cycle of Jesus Christ.
You know, so there are it's it's fascinating stuff. And
and one of our coworkers, Joe McCormick on Forward Thinking,
is a bit of a scholar with this kind of stuff,
so we we usually check in with him on this
before we do something. Joe, if you're listening, we're doing
(17:17):
our best. We will ask for your health retroactively, right, Yeah,
We'll just will change the calendar so that this comes
out on a different day. There's there's this other idea.
So so that's one idea, the idea that it's based
on an earlier quote pagan festival. Uh, there's the second idea,
(17:38):
which you also hear, that it is a purely Christian tradition,
that this is a that this is a solely original
Christian thing. And then you'll see, um, you know, you
will see different people arguing this, I would say, with
varying levels of persuasiveness. However, at this point, the um,
(18:03):
the secular truth of the matter is that the historians
and the researchers aren't bearing that out there finding um,
they're finding an evolution and revolution is a good way
to put it. We this is the same thing we
found when we were researching Christmas. How it just these
these holidays and celebratory feasts and stuff like that really
(18:26):
do seem to have evolved over time as religions, religions
and faith started meeting each other in the world, as
various faith started growing, and it kind of just became okay, well,
here are these set days where we can celebrate the
thing that we need to celebrate, UM, and we'll focus
it around this day because we all kind of already
had these days just because everybody had not the same calendar,
(18:49):
but they were looking at the same moon, right, everybody's
looking at the same sun and where it's going, and
how everything's changing in the world during cycles. It's very interesting.
Well and and also you know, it occurs to me,
Matt that maybe evolved as a loaded term for me
to check. But but there is there is this UM
(19:10):
I think incredibly inspiring and continual struggle that the entire
human species has been doing since we got into this
counting thing, and that's trying to remember the past and
when things happened, UH, such that we can predict when
things will occur again equinoxes, right, um, so, so much
(19:32):
of our early knowledge is astronomical. Uh, there's there's this
third one that we've kind of mentioned that it was
a tradition based on the pre existing Jewish Passover. And
here's something that throws a little bit of salt or shade,
whichever you preferred. Slaying is on the idea of this
(19:53):
Anglo Saxon goddess. The word for Easter in most non
English languages is based on the Pascal the p A
S c H a l root word Latin and Greek,
so it doesn't it doesn't seem as likely in other countries. Now,
(20:15):
of course, this this linguistic pattern doesn't give us a
clear origin point yet for for the the timing of
the celebration. Right, yeah, you there are there are people
who get degrees based very closely in just studying root
words like that and Greek words. They go back and
(20:38):
trying to analyze these ancient texts. So don't take it
from Ben and I. These are just the things we
have observed and researched. So when when we talk about
this stuff, when we talk about Easter, one of the
things that we have to talk about are the various
symbols that in modern times have become associate ated with this, right, Yeah,
(21:02):
one of the things you've heard and I remember hearing
this term first from uh song. I think it was
like a schoolyard song that we used to sing in
preschool about hot cross buns. And according to this book
dates and meanings of religious and other festivals, hot cross
buns that used to be kept specifically for Good Friday,
(21:24):
with the symbolism obviously of the cross, although it's thought
that the hot cross buns originated prior, you know, before
main mainstream Christian times, I guess pagan times. Um, the
bun represents the moon and its four quarters. That's what
that's the idea of the hot cross buns. So you've
got bun and then this, I think the pictures I've
(21:47):
seen or have a white cross on the center of it.
So then you've got the four quadrants or stages of
the moon. Yes, yeah, that which is which is fascinating
to me, because I had no idea that was true.
That the custom there apparently tracing back to when people
who worshiped Zeus would bake a cake in the form
(22:09):
of a bull with a cross upon it to represent
its horns. That's difficult than it sounds. You know. Have
you ever tried to shape something and bake it, not
without some kind of mold, not without some kind of mold.
I have tried and failed multiple times. I've made just
gingerbread abominations. Uh, there were there's some things that man
or at least this guy was not meant to make.
(22:31):
Um and this is bread to right, Yes, yeah, so
the the thing that is a hot cross bun now
was a talisman of sorts, right, and that's this fascinating.
People would hang buns from their kitchen ceilings to protect
their households from evil for the rest of the year.
And yeah, uh, and they were baked so much that
(22:55):
they didn't really get moldy as much as you would,
you know, because I know what people to think, right,
you're thinking, so you hang these pieces of bread that
become mold in your house has that funky smell. It's
hard to place until you like look up and oh man,
that green stuff is probably not good precious mold. No.
(23:17):
Another thing, while we're on the subject of food, there's
typically an Easter feast of some sort, and this can
be super elaborate It can change depending on which country
you go to. Often people will have an Easter ham.
For instance, Um, that was my family. We would we
would always get a honey baked ham. Oh wow, I'm
(23:38):
such a middle class white kid, aren't it? What is what?
Why are you beating yourself up? I can just I
can see, I can see my family and I are
going to get our our ham for Easter? What kind
of sides did you guys make? We didn't cook, man, Oh,
you just got the sides from honey baked ham. That's
so sad. No, seriously, man, don't don't yourself up over that.
(24:01):
I think feast in general are amazing things. I'm down for.
Not that I did not love that brown sugarcoating on
that ham. Oh my goodness, it sounds good. I mean
hungry thinking about it. And and let's, you know, while
we're while we're talking about food, let's get to the
big one, right, the easter eggs? What? Why? Yeah? Even
(24:24):
as even as a child, at quite a young age,
I'm sure I wasn't the only one. I'm sure a
lot of you listeners were saying, so wait, Although we
are celebrating this very important day for the most important
person or the son of God. Uh, there's also an
(24:45):
anthropomorphic rabbit that lays eggs. I don't think about it. Then.
All I have to say is I have vivid memories
of running around my churchyard in Shambly, Georgia and finding
Easter eggs as a kid. I vivid memories of that
and how much fun I had. Yeah, Easter egg hunts
(25:07):
are really fun. It's cool and it gets people. Also,
it gets people to associate the day if they're you know,
if they're not into them more the belief system behind it, right,
then it gets people, to children at least, to associate
the day with a lot of fun, really good stuff exactly,
(25:27):
and then you start learning about it as you get
Older's perfect idea. Here's one of the coolest things about
this though, What's that we found that this whole dying
of Easter eggs thing isn't something that was come up
with for, you know, to sell more die originally. This
is an ancient thing, and you know that sounds bad,
but a lot of the times traditions that we found,
(25:50):
some traditions in the modern way have some kind of
profit motive behind them. Some of the ones that we've
looked at it's really nice to know that this one,
at least originally isn't so if you if you go
way back to ancient times when the Egyptians and Persians
were running around. Uh well, Egyptians and Persians and ancient times,
uh uh, these two exchange dyed eggs with friends. Okay.
(26:15):
And it was in Mesotamia that Christians first gave eggs
to their friends at Easter to remind them of the
resurrection of Jesus as a little token of remembrance. Okay,
that makes sense that that comes from the author Rowland pertain.
So all the way back to Mesopotamia. There is a
modern industry now around dyeing eggs, but there was also
(26:36):
a practice there. It's it's uh interesting too, because you know,
an egg is symbolically it's very much a symbol of fertility,
don't you think. Oh yeah, So centuries ago, when Lent
ended on Easter Sunday, it became tradition for people to
give these decorated eggs as presents to their friends and servants.
(26:57):
Right and over time, this tradition in its continued, and
there there are some Eastern European regions, particularly in Ukraine,
where people are known for their beautiful and intricate, elaborate,
ornate egg designs. Right, oh, yeah, it's just beautiful looking
stuff there. Uh. It is weird ben to me that
(27:20):
an egg that you would use to die, that you'd
buy the store and then used to die for Easter.
It's supposed to be a symbol of fertility, but really
it's a perfect symbol of infertility because it's the result
of not being fertilized. Well, yeah, I guess you're right.
I never thought about that. Yeah, if it were actually
the fertility, there would be a chicken there and you'd
(27:40):
have to take it back and give it to the
mama chicken. This is a total side note. Have you
ever heard of ballut? No? So, ballut is this thing.
It's a it's a it's in the Philippines. It's a
snag where it's a they fertilize hank and they cook
(28:01):
it and you you know when you buy a crack,
open the shell and you eat up the embryo. Basically,
no worries. Man, I had one, did you really? Yeah?
Was it any good? I'm not eating him now, that's
for sure. And I don't know how much of that
is just a reaction to texture. You know what I mean.
(28:22):
But you know that has nothing to do with anything
except check it out listeners if you haven't heard of
that already. Side note, it is traditionally balute is traditionally
considered an aphrodesiac. I don't know why. I cannot speak
for the results. Maybe it's kind of like watching horror
films where you're just so freaked out by the experience
(28:43):
that you seek comfort that your nervous system just gives
you the fight or flight. So the tradition of giving
eggs to friends and associates towards the end of Lent
is according to Snopes we looked into this, eggs were
one of the foods forbidden during Lent. So Easter. Uh,
(29:04):
in Easter egg was like a special treat, a reward
of sorts and uh you know, the the candy Easter
eggs of the modern times go back to another another
more serious purpose in earlier Christianity, when hard boiled eggs
were dyed red in memory of blood of Jesus Christ
(29:24):
blood and given to children again to help to preserve
their health. Okay, so like you could get a hot
cross bun in the house, an egg for the kid
and that that um. Not Again, all of these things
vary a little bit across cultures. Um. They're also we've
(29:47):
talked about some traditional foods, so let's talk about some
traditional activities, right, So we talked about the sunrise services
held outside. Let's see, let's stroll on the world, shall we.
All right, well, let's head over to Bulgaria. In Bulgaria,
people don't hide eggs. They have egg fights. Ben. That
(30:08):
sounds like fun and like a lot of work for
mom and dad in the morning or you know later
that evening when you gotta clean everything up. Um. So
here here's the thing. Whoever comes out of the game
with an unbroken egg is the winner and assumed to
be the most successful member in the family for the
coming year. So it's a nice omen or. And what
(30:30):
is the opposite of an omen? Uh, the opposite. You
could have a good omen You have good omen, then
it's a good omen for the family for that family member.
In another tradition, the oldest woman in the family will
take the faces of the little children and then rub
them with the first red egg she's colored, and that
(30:50):
will symbolize her wish that they have rosy cheeks. Health
and strength. And in Mexico we head on over to Mexico.
Then we find that children will smash traditionally smash eggs
over each other's heads in the week before Lent. Uh.
These eggs are filled with small pieces of paper rather
than raw egg So that's very nice again like people
(31:14):
thinking about mom and dad and we gotta do. In Germany,
eggs are dyed green on Monday Thursday. Yeah. This is
always between nine uh, the nineteenth of March and the
twenty two of April. Uh. It could be on different
days depending on the Gregorian or Julian calendar. Used. It's
the you're right, that was the Thursday before Easter, and
(31:37):
it commemorates the last Supper of Jesus Christ. And it's
called Mandate Thursday because I also commemorates that washing of
the feet. Uh m a U d y Yes, yeah,
that's the one uh. And this is something that is
(31:58):
bigger in other countries. It's not the biggest thing in
the United States. At least in Greece. There's a public
procession in Easter parade and these red eggs are tapped
together while people have a call and response chant. In
the US, there are some parades, the oldest being the
one at Atlantic City, and uh, the best one maybe
(32:23):
being the one in New York, which is often how
it goes with parades, the Fifth Avenue one, it's pretty awesome.
And uh, in England there's a thing called the hair
pie scramble and bottle kicking. Okay, that sounds fun, all right,
what's what's the story behind? Well, the story goes that
a woman was saved by hair running across the path
(32:45):
of a bull. So that's kind of interesting and possibly
symbolic on Easter Monday. On Easter Monday, hundreds of years ago. Now,
as a token of her appreciation, she bequeathed a piece
of land to the rector. And it's important to know
that the soul condition for this giving of the land
was that the rector have a hair pie made, h
(33:07):
a r e pie made to be distributed to all
the parishioners together with a large quantity of ale every
year for a feast. I mean that sounds cool. I
would be so down for that hair pie. Yeah, whichund
is horrible, right, yes, but it's it's fortunate for us,
Matt that it brings us to one of the biggest
characters for this time of the year, and that is
(33:31):
the Easter rabbit, the Easter bunny, the Easter bunny. Yes, yeah,
it sounds like an old, long time favorite. Years Yeah, yeah,
I was a big fan. I had I think I
had a stuffed bunny, large stuffed bunny. Did you ever
see that website where it's just pictures of scary looking
Easter bunnies I have. I think we looked at that
(33:53):
together while never going back to that. You I go
back there just to check it out. Um. Right, So this,
this creature also not mentioned in this form in a
biblical text, but rabbits, like eggs are powerful symbols traditionally
of fertility and new life and and therefore an Easter ceremony.
(34:18):
You know this, this Easter bunny, like Santa Claus or St. Nick,
has become a popular children's character. Uh the year round.
Really you can see Easter Bunny. I don't know, it's
in the it's in the zeitgeist. You know, it's not
weird for there to be an Easter bunny sketch on
your favorite comedy show. But it could be that this
(34:41):
is sort of a historical mistake. Because Snope tells us
the all manner of rabbits are said to lay eggs
on Easter Day. Hold on what, Yeah, you're telling me
that rabbits lay eggs are said to you know, you
gotta be very careful with the language there. And that's
like the pursuit of happiness that's continued. So the the
(35:08):
hair itself always seen pre Christian times associated with fertility,
the returning spring and similar to the study of the
groundhog shadow on Groundhog Day, movements of the hair, because
originally was a hair, movements of the hair were as
(35:29):
seen as portents are possibly omens um ways to figure
out what would be happening in the coming year. So
the hair itself is uh. Hairs and rabbits are often
confused hairs and bunnies, and the hair is a larger
(35:50):
version with with some distinct differences. They're they're different animals.
They're not synonyms. But the Easter bunny is the is
the US go to, right, Yeah, the cute little hoppy
hoppy bunny. Yeah. So he shows up in the sixteenth
century literature as a deliverer of eggs um in his
(36:11):
own way in springtime. St. Nicholas bent On, you know,
rewarding the good would give out his candy and the
special treats in the shoes, and there are all kinds
of traditions with that. The little bunny then goes around
and gives out colored eggs, but only to the good
kids exactly, only ones get cold eggs. I guess I
(36:33):
don't know. I've never I guess I was never that
bad of a kid. I soiled eggs. Oh that's unfair,
and you never know until you crack it open. Oh man,
that would that would ruin a child's spring. Yeah, it's
a fortune cookie. But so this this um Easter bunny stuff,
this is German in origin. Um leading back to kind
(36:57):
of what the venerable bed it was saying, uh hairs
were sacred to uh the different festivals and arguably to
this festival of uh the goddess Easter, which again still
a subject of debate for people. But at some point
the hair was replaced by the rabbit. And that's because
(37:19):
well common conjectures, because just they're hard to tell apart.
Was just well, well just you we got a rabbit.
That's fine, And I can imagine in a pinch and
you're trying to get your Easter celebration ready. Nobody will
know it's a rabbit. Yeah, nobody will know. So here
is the I guess it's time for us to say
the big secret, which we've talked about and is is
(37:40):
similar to some of the stuff we saw a Christmas
and some of the stuff we saw on our Halloween episode,
and that is modern day Easter celebrations are a kind
of religious syncretism. What's religious syncretism? That's kind of what
I was mentioning earlier, when it's different religions borrowing from
one in our faiths borrowing from one another, or kind
(38:02):
of congealing into one one particular celebration or one particular holiday,
or one particular belief kind of like how we've talked
about folk saints in earlier episodes. We had, um the
experiences I had with sin Simon and marshamon right, and uh,
maybe more recent, more recent example of religious syncretism would
(38:25):
be the followers of Santam Buerte in Mexico and the
Southwest United States. Uh, this is a folk saint who
is um sort of female patron of death and not
you know, not necessarily an evil or a bad thing
at all, just passing right as the spirit goes right.
(38:49):
So you know, religions, like people do not exist in
a vacuum, at least historically. And and so although this
though from our perspective, right, humans live a very short
amount of time in comparison to the amount of time
our species is around or even civilization. So it may
(39:10):
seem that none of the things that we see every year,
that our long held traditions are changing. But the truth
is that over time they do seem to change. Um,
they adapt to other cultures, different practices or traditions take hold.
And this is something that has kind of happened with
(39:31):
Easter eggs and with the rabbit. Yeah, exactly. You can
look back to those early Christian times to see the
the spring fertility rights and rituals that you can bring
in with the Easter eggs. Like we said, the eggs,
the rabbits, the hairs, um. A lot of this goes
back to that stuff. And for obvious reasons. You know,
(39:54):
these are fertility symbols. We're talking about springtime, right, yes, uh,
the symbolic resurrection of the world after the death of
the symbolic death of winter. And you can go back
further and find you know, stories of um gods who
are you know, like vegetative gods who died with the
(40:16):
harvest and were born again. And this is not in
any way invalidate, of course, the story of Easter or
dilute it. It's um, it's for makes it richer. Yeah,
well that's cool because there's this long history of this
kind of thing. I don't know that's what I see
at least, so it's uh, it's interesting. Though. One thing
(40:37):
we do know for sure is that, uh, the United
States was, in comparison to Europe at the time when
people are celebrating this stuff, they were the ones who
substituted the rabbit, the bunny rabbit for the hair, because
we just have more rabbits. Yeah, more rabbits. And you know,
it looks better on a postcard or in an ad
(41:00):
if you're having an Easter sale or something like that,
you have a cute little money that you just want
to reach out and touch and pet instead of this
hair that's you know, maybe standing up on its back legs. Right. Yeah,
So here's our here's our ultimate verdict of of what
people know now. And there's an exciting thing too, we
(41:22):
have to mention towards the end. Uh, despite the controversy
over its origins. It's indisputable Easter remains one of the
most important celebrations or again holy days in the Christian
experience right and along the way in its formation it
acquired primarily in terms of symbols, It acquired other pre
(41:43):
existing uh, symbols and traditions, right, And this doesn't invalidate it.
But those things, some of them, especially the rabbit, were
around beforehand. Uh. The nature of their existence beforehand, other
than saying fertility rights, is still somewhat nebulous. You'll hear
(42:04):
a lot of people claim that they have figured it
out right, but man, perhaps they have, but at this
point there's not a universally agreed origin of these practices
and the ways in which they melded to form the
the festival that is celebrated today. Yeah. I just want
(42:29):
to say I have so many great memories still of Easter,
and it makes me this podcast is making me want
to go visit my parents on Easter and go to
church with them, just to go do the whole thing.
Get my ham, really, I really want that ham. Now
are they going to get a ham? This year? And
you think, I hope? So I can only assume it's
(42:50):
been a while since I've done Easter with them. But yeah,
I go and try to bring my mom something. You know,
I'm gonna I'm gonna call them. I'm glad that you
do that and you bring something to your mom. That's
very nice. But I'm gonna call right after this. So
we are concluding our podcast day. We hope that this
look at some of the hidden origins of Easter symbols
(43:14):
has has been at least interesting. And with that, you guys,
thank you so much for listening. We hope that you
have enjoyed our episode on the hidden meaning of Easter symbols.
If you would like to learn more, please do check
out some of our videos we have coming up. Definitely
go to how stuff works dot com. Check out that
how Easter Works article and then just pruis around that thing.
(43:37):
It's it's huge how stuff Works and you can find
everything there. There's some neat stuff too. There's some good
articles and a couple of my favorite writers on the
site get weird with it. Yeah they do, Yeah, they do,
especially our buddies Josh Clark, Jonathan Strickland, Robert Lamb's. Yeah.
So if you're into weird, which assume you are, for
(44:00):
checking out our show, then you will enjoy that and
many more articles if you would like to hear every
podcast we've ever done and see almost every video that
we've ever done. We have our own website too. It's
stuff they don't want you to know dot com, So
go check us out there, find us on Facebook and Twitter,
And if you don't want to do any of that stuff,
(44:21):
do one simple thing right to us. We are conspiracy
at how stuff Works dot com. From one on this
topic another unexplained phenomenon, visit YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff.
You can also get in touch on Twitter at the
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