Global Easter traditions
Not everyone enjoys egg hunts and Easter bonnets, as our flying trip round the planet’s most interesting customs shows...
Egg-cellent fun
Eggs play a crucial role in many countries’ Easter celebrations. In Bulgaria it’s all about throwing them as huge egg fights take place among families, with whoever still has an egg intact at the end of the game deemed the winner and assumed to be the most successful member of the family in the coming year.
In the town of Haux in France, it’s tradition to crack more than 5,000 eggs into a giant omelette to feed around 1,000 people from the town’s main square on Easter Monday. And in the US, eggs are used for the traditional Easter Egg Roll where the President invites children to roll coloured, hardboiled eggs down the White House lawn in a custom that dates back to President Rutherford in 1878.
A time for tradition
For many Christian countries, Easter is a time to remember the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ and many represent this with a grand pageant. Guatemala has one of the largest Easter celebrations in the world, where a sombre processional march heads down streets decorated with sand and coloured sawdust scattered into intricate patterns, while Spain, France and Israel all hold their own pageants, often with floats depicting Biblical scenes. In Italy there is both the religious tradition where a huge burning cross illuminates the sky in the Vatican, while in Florence an ornate cart is loaded with fireworks and led through the streets by people in 15th Century costumes, supposedly to herald in a peaceful year ahead.
Seasonal superstitions
You might want to wear an anorak if you find yourself in Poland or Hungary on Easter Monday as in both countries youngsters head into the streets with buckets of water and water pistols
to soak one another. Harking back to old fertility rituals, legend says any girls who get soaked will marry within the year.
Meanwhile Holy Saturday in Corfu is a potentially dangerous affair as people participate in traditional pot throwing, where they hurl crockery out of their windows to smash on the street below in a custom that’s said to welcome in spring, symbolising the new crops that will be gathered in new pots.