Sweet, spicy and sacred

Fish, buns, eggs and lamb – the traditional foods of Easter, some predating Jesus as the Christian church converted pagan rituals to its own observances – “popping a snow white apron on top of the scarlet petticoat” as Elisabeth Luard puts it in her book Sacred Food.

The food traditions are also rather hemisphere specific. In Europe, Easter occurs in spring, so swapping it for autumn in the southern hemisphere is not quite as drastic as celebrating Christmas with roast goose, brussels sprouts and steamed pudding.

But in Europe too, in the days of supermarket convenience and a lessening of religious observances, the reasons behind Easter foods are no longer obvious.

The reason fish is the food laid down for Good Friday is because we still are in Lent, when other flesh (fur and feather) is forbidden. In Europe the 40 days of Lent begins at just the time of year the winter storms in the Atlantic abated and fishermen could once again venture out for a church-ordained boom period.

Lent also coincided with a period of agricultural downtime, whereas here it comes at the most plentiful time of year.

Not only was meat proscribed, but no cakes or biscuits were baked and no alcohol served. As the hens continued to lay, eggs were hard-boiled and kept until the end of Lent, when in many traditions they were decorated or dyed. The Greek tradition is to give red-dyed eggs on Easter Sunday and in eastern Europe eggs still are painted with patterns in wax.

Eostre was the Norse goddess of spring and her sacred animal was a hare. Her name has been adapted for the Christian festival and her scared animal, the hare, was subverted into the Easter Bunny.

Elisabeth Luard points out the pagan overlap: “the hiding of eggs for young people to find provides a not-sodelicate hint that it’s time to get on with the business of choosing a mate”.

The rabbit’s fecundity also made it a suitable emblem for birth and new life – too much so for the Foundation for Rabbit Free Australia, which in 1991 registered a campaign to replace the bunny with the bilby.

In her book Feast (Chatto & Windus 2004), which celebrates foods for significant occasions, Nigella Lawson talks of eggs at Easter being taken over by “an amount of Cadburyization”. This turns out to be the exactly correct word.

There were chocolate Easter eggs in France and Germany early in the 19th century but Cadbury’s bought them to popularity starting in 1875 and building up to 19 different varieties by 1893, according to the company’s website.

The launch of milk chocolate in 1905 took them to new sales figures. Manufacture of chocolate eggs occupies Cadbury’s for eight months of the year.

Before the egg hunt of Easter Sunday come hot cross buns on Good Friday, although of course they have been in the shops since January.

One part of me tut-tuts at this flouting of tradition; another part of me enjoys a buttered, spicy fruit bun on more than one day of the year.

Luard says our hot cross buns “is a somewhat thin-blooded variant” of the Easter breads of the Mediterranean with whole eggs baked into them, or in Germany in and Austria in the form of animals with the egg forming the head, others nestle whole eggs in the links of braided bread.

Easter is of course a moveable feast arriving each year on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring (in our case the autumn) equinox – any time between March 22 and April 22.

There have been suggestions that it should be standardised to fit in more neatly with the school holiday program and so that it lands in same financial quarter each year and stops mucking up comparisons of one year with another.

I’d prefer not to give in to all orderliness. Asia can cope with the timing of the lunar new year bobbing about, let us keep one celebration tied to the (eminently predictable) whims of the moon.

However strict or lax your Easter food observances (in Feast Nigella Lawson has a rabbit curry recipe for hot cross bunny), enjoy the long break.

Lamb under a year old is common to the Jewish celebration of Passsover, when it is eaten with bitter herbs, which is celebrated at the same time of year.

One part of me tut-tuts at this flouting of tradition; another part of me enjoys a buttered, spicy fruit bun on more than one day of the year