Easter traditions are just weird
AN overheard conversation about how difficult it would be to explain Easter to an alien made me realise I had no idea why an enormous rabbit gives kids chocolate eggs to commemorate a man’s zombie-like revival and disappearance two millennia ago.
A cursory investigation confirmed that, yes, the tradition is pretty dang bizarre, but no more so than the wealth of hog wild Easter conventions in other corners of the globe.
Religious holidays bring out all manner of pagan-steeped peculiarities and, as a society, we keep replaying them year on year without questioning why a whopping great rodent is breaking into our houses to hide eggs that presumably came from a high-intensity farming operation of cocoa-fed battery hens.
Like Halloween’s often bemoaned tradition of ghoulish costumes and trick or treating – “Get that bloody American crap out of here”, dinky-di Aussie killjoys love to say – the Easter egg tradition probably came to our shores by way of the United States.
The origins are murky, but it is generally accepted theory that German immigrants brought tales of an egg-laying hare (not a rabbit) to America in the 1700s.
Those eggs were actual, born-of-achook affairs, emptied out and decorated by parents to leave in little nests for well-behaved children.
Switzerland uses the cuckoo in its folklore, which makes more sense than a strange bunny squatting out hard-shell gametes.
All sorts of hypotheses exist about what pagan traditions the Easter bunny story draws from, but everyone agrees it has something to do with the rabbit (or hare) having a massive propensity for knocking paws – and, like eggs, being a major player in the fertility and resurrection symbol stakes. Fair enough. If young’uns are able to look forward to an obese, hairy, biscuit thieving bloke landing on their rooftops with a retinue of magic reindeer under his lash, the Easter bunny is not such a great stretch.
Probably best to shield those little ones’ eyes for this next bit, though.
Just across the ditch, in New Zealand, hunters celebrated the holiday last year by slaughtering about 10,000 rabbits in the annual Easter Bunny Hunt in Central Otago.
More than 300 shooters competed in the all-out massacre, given 24 hours to put a bullet in as many of the vermin as they could.
It was well short of the record of more than 23,000 lead-riddled rabbits, but plenty to get a few names on the wrong side of the Vermin Overlord’s naughty or nice list.
Papua New Guineans haven’t bought into Big Chocolate’s hostile takeover of Easter with the same verve as us, celebrating instead by creating an Easter tree decorated with hanging sticks of tobacco and cigarettes outside church.
After the service, congregants file out the front and are given durries to take home and enjoy.
The province of Pampanga in the Philippines, the only Christian nation in Asia, has a more extreme way of celebrating the religion brought to their shores by the Spaniards in the 16th Century.
Devotees re-enact Christ’s crucifixion with nauseating dedication; hundreds flogging themselves in a bloody act of self flagellation.
A core few go even further, dressing up as Jesus and being crucified with actual nails hammered through their hands and feet to pay respect to their saviour’s sacrifice.
In the Czech Republic, men use special Easter whips to whack the ladies they desire on the bottom.
Not too hard, apparently, since the lucky girls repay the compliment by giving their heavy-handed suitors decorated eggs and a shot of whisky.
Just like Valentine’s Day, with a few more welts.
Norwegian families gather around and watch or read murder mysteries so they can bond over working out who the killer is.
It is so popular that TV stations change their program scheduling and milk companies have started printing short whodunit yarns on their cartons around this time of year. Why not try them all year-round? Shoot a rodent, smoke a stogie, pierce your flesh, swat a kaboose and solve a murder, all while gorging on delicious eggs delivered by a magical rabbit.
It is a tradition, after all.