HAPPY EASTER TO YOU ALL… we hope you have a lovely weekend with your family and friends…and a little sunshine too! Some of the joys of Easter, apart from the religious elements, are the Easter Chics and Chocolate… mmmmm… but we’ve also heard of some Easter traditions in other countries which we thought we would share with you.
In Poland, butter and lambs play a big part in Easter celebrations. The butter lamb makes up part of a basket of food that is taken to church on Easter Saturday to be blessed. Isn’t this lamb amazing…it’s butter not chocolate! They can be bought in Polish supermarkets or why not try sculpting your own – it would make a great centrepiece for your Easter Table? They make our packets of butter look rather boring…come on you butter manufacturers out there… we want butter farmyard animals too!
In France, the Netherlands and Belgium, there is a really sweet story that gets told to children at Easter time. It is said that all the church bells fly away on the Thursday before Easter (or the Saturday, if you are Dutch or Flemish) to go to Rome for a few days. This is a way of explaining why the bells are silent, in mourning for Jesus. They return with gifts of eggs and chocolate rabbits.
In Australia, rabbits are eating away the native bilbies’ habitats and last year it was estimated there were only 600 left in the wild. A campaign was developed to replace the Easter bunny with the Easter bilby, in a bid to raise the little guy’s profile. It seems to be working as he has been embraced by many schools and chocolate manufacturers too. Long live the Easter bilby!