Odds are, in a few weeks your neighborhood parish is going to be laying colorful plastic eggs filled with sweet treats in a nearby field. Children with woven baskets will line up in hopes of collecting more eggs, and in turn candy, than their eager friends.
It’s a lovely holiday celebrating the conclusion of Lent, the resurrection of Christ, and the coming of spring. But what do bunnies, eggs, and baskets have to do with Jesus’ sacrifice and resurrection?
The Easter Bunny
For the Catholic faith, the celebration of Easter carries heavy religious significance. But Easter’s original significance seems to lie elsewhere.
The beginning of spring welcomes newly green grass, leaves returning to tree branches, and flowers in bloom. At least, that’s the hope. To welcome the abundance and fertility of the season, ancient Christian practices incorporated a bunny into Easter celebrations to symbolize the fertility of the season.
Since this, bunnies have become the mascot of the spring season and have been welcomed into religious celebrations of spring as well.
Easter Eggs
Like bunnies, eggs also symbolize the fertility and abundance of the spring season. However, the practice of coloring eggs seems to come from Lenten practices in ancient Rome.
While today we tend to give up social media or chocolate for Lent, the early Christians commonly gave up eating eggs. They would use dyes and color the eggs so they could distinguish the older eggs from the new ones. After Lent came to an end, and they could eat these eggs once again, they would finish the colorful eggs first.
The tradition of coloring eggs with family and friends has made its way into modern households, and acts as a reminder of the sacrifices we made during Lent, and of the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus.
Easter Baskets
Like Easter eggs, Easter baskets held a practical as well as spiritual significance. Early Christians would fill their baskets with items they abstained from during Lent. Often there were eggs, meats, sweets and butter. On Easter, patrons would bring these items in baskets to their local churches for a blessing.
Today we carry on the practice. While we might not be purposefully filling our baskets with our Lenten penance, it’s a symbol of our religious fasting over the last 40 days and the abundance that greets us on the other side.
While the importance of colorful eggs, bunnies, and baskets may not be perfectly clear, they have roots in ancient Christian celebration of the Easter holiday.
As Easter approaches, stay steadfast in your Lenten penance and consider the ultimate sacrifice made by Jesus and the beauty of his resurrection.