Easter’s over, but remanents thereof remain for sure. Who knows, there might be a partially eaten bunny in your Easter baskets.
Another Easter tradition, Easter bunnies, probably got their beginnings from pagan tradition. They are known to be prolific procreators and are a symbol of fertility and new life.
One theory is that Easter bunnies came to America by way of German immigrants around 1700. The German ‘Easter Hare’ originally was a judge who decided if children’s behavior was good or bad at the start of the Eastertide. In the legend he carries colored eggs in his basket along with candy and oftentimes toys on Easter morning to the homes of the children. Excluding the judging part, this is basically still how it works nowadays. Somehow the German Easter bunny sounds a little like Santa.
Easter Baskets
As a child in America, when my siblings and I came downstairs on Easter morning, baskets lined up on the table filled with chocolate eggs and a chocolate Easter bunny. One year a pewter pin with a simple bunny on it. I kept that for years.
My Swiss husband remembers his Easter baskets were always at his grandmother’s. When they got there on Easter he and his siblings had to search the apartment to find their hidden baskets with treats. He said it wasn’t too hard to find the baskets in an apartment with 4 rooms, it was fun. I asked him how that worked. He said that their names were on the baskets. If they accidently found someone else’s basket they weren’t allowed to tell that person where it was. Just close the cabinet or put the curtain back and keep searching. He told me the baskets were small, woven baskets with poisonous green colored fake grass at the bottom. Real eggs, along with a couple of chocolate eggs, a chocolate bunny, some colorful jelly bean eggs placed on top of the ‘grass’.
Commercializing Easter
Today, Easter is a commercialized event in Europe and America as well as a religious holiday. It is marked by high sales for greeting cards, chocolate eggs and chocolate Easter bunnies and other gifts.
It seems like as soon as Christmas is over, the chocolate bunnies are lining the shelves to be bought. It’s a running joke in Switzerland that the chocolate Santas that couldn’t be sold are melted down and reincarnated into bunnies. But that is a joke, right? Naw, the Swiss wouldn’t do that. Naw.
Switzerland even has its own Easter cake. It’s called ‘Osterfladen’ [Easter flat cake] and is a sweet bread with raisins and almonds. I have never tried one because I think it looks like what I know as a sweet roll. I don’t like sweet rolls, especially the raisins in them. But the Easter cake is very traditional here in Switzerland. You know it has to be because everybody has a special recipe for it, including Betty Bossi. And, if you don’t feel like making one, every grocery store and bakery sells them.
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