Easter in Holland

Easter in Holland is just like Christmas, more and more a family feast without knowledge of the origin.
So it’s good to start with a little history.

Guest post by Marco

The origin of the Christian Easter comes from Jewish tradition.
The Jewish „Pesach” ( in Christian liturgy Pacha) is close to the exodus from Egypt.
The celebration of it, is during the centuries preserved in various forms.

In the Christian tradition Easter is the most important liturgy-feast.
On „Good-Friday” (The friday before easter) we remember the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus, and at Easter we cellebrate his resurrection from the death.

Anyway, this was most important in my childhood.
When you ask the children now, most of them have no idea about the Christian history of easter.
They just think that the Easter-Bunny brings presents and chocolat eggs, like Santa brings presents at
Christmass.

When we look at how we cellebrate Easter these day’s, we must realize that it comes from long before Christianity.
From this point of view it was the cellebration of Spring-Feast.
The start of a new begin, and the end of winter-time and scarcity.
About the tradition of the eggs that we decorate in various forms, we hae to go back 7000 years, when farmers buried eggs on their land as symbol of fertility and to have a good harvest.

Here in Holland we do the same.
The parents ( the easter-bunny) hides the eggs in the house or if they have, in the garden, and the children have to find them.
Besides decoration, eating and hiding eggs, we dont have many traditions here.

Easter evaluate more and more into a family-feast.
They come together (most on Easter-Sunday) and have dinner together.
At Easter-Monday people go out to markets, family-parcs etc. and have no idea of the real meaning of Easter.

Happy Easter!

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