Decorated Eggs Given To Children By Easter Bunnies

Easter bunnies with decorated eggs and gifts, are an event many children across the world, look forward to, every year. It is an event, taking place around the Spring, when eggs are hidden away for the egg hunt, all over the house and in the backyard. Sometimes, the Easter egg hunt may go across the neighborhood and children are searching for Easter eggs all over the neighbourhood.

This is how I enjoyed Easter as a child and this is how my children enjoy Easter. We go to midnight mass on Saturday night and celebrate Resurrection Sunday with a feast after Sunday mass. After everyone celebrates with a feast, children are off to have the time of their lives with the egg hunt and winning prizes from the Easter bunnies.

Easter is a time of celebration, a time of renewal and a time for being together with my extended family.

I use the ideas I learned from my parents on my own children, although I hire Easter bunnies for Easter, as I do not have the gall to dress up as an Easter bunny, and use the same party organizers every year. They have a complete package where they supply all the Easter candy and other Easter gifts the children will earn as they go on an Easter egg hunt.

My children always enjoy finding decorated eggs and winning gifts from the Easter Bunnies.

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Easter Story With A Passion Play

If a Christian believer feels a need to deepen their faith, then this can often be accomplished through a re-enactment of the Easter story itself. Church tradition supplies different versions of these re-enactments.

Sometimes they take place within the church itself, sometimes they are private matters, and sometimes they are part of a much larger collective activity. Focusing on the story of Jesus Christ and His death and resurrection will help to incorporate that saving, freeing event more deeply into a believer's daily life.

Sometimes, to drive home the Easter story in a deeper way, people either go to observe a Passion Play or even participate in one. The members of a church may put on a play that re-enacts the events that led up to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

But in some cases, such a play isn't put on by a single church but by an entire town or village. This is the case, for example, with the yearly Passion Play put on in Fazenda, Brazil, or in the town of Oberammergau in Germany.

People might take their Easter devotional attitude and apply it each day, with early morning Bible readings or prayers. They may apply those devotions to meditation on the Stations of the Cross, or their church might have created its own Stations at intervals around the walls of the building, to help the contemplations of the congregation.

As believers keep the works and life of the Easter story of Christ before their eyes day by day, their faith is deepened and these re-enactments, on whatever scale they occur, are a strengthening force in their lives.

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Easter Stories And Origins Of Easter

When you read the Easter stories about the Last Supper, the crucifixion of Jesus, and the triumphant resurrection on the third day, you may not think you're reading anything about an ancient fertility cult.

Yet the early church saw enough parallels between these stories and those of a dying and resurrecting god who revived the vegetation of the world that it deliberately made a connection between them. The origin of Easter, for the most part, lies in those ancient tales, far more than it does in the stories of Jesus.

This sort of death and resurrection, precursors to the Easter stories familiar to the church, was played out graphically in the Greek myth of Persephone. She was required to spend half the year in Hades, the Greek land of death, before returning to the living world for the rest of the year.

Her mother Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, had no heart to make crops flourish while her daughter was in the underworld. The crops only grew again when Persephone returned to life in the upper world. The correspondence between such stories of spring and the meaning of Easter in the church is pretty hard to miss.

Even the Jewish Passover, with which the Easter stories are intimately connected, occurs in the spring. There are so many spring festivals connected to a dying and resurrecting god that it was actually logical for the church to connect their own dying and resurrecting divinity to them.

The meaning of Easter, in the church's view, simply expanded and perhaps explained what those myths imperfectly signified. The church may not have managed to eliminate all the pagan fertility symbolism, but it likely succeeded beyond its wildest dreams as it appropriated those older cults.

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Easter Sunday On The Christian Calendar

The Easter bunny as a pagan fertility symbol? This animal may be portrayed as a frivolous, sometimes goofy character by the media, but it is indeed a remnant of the pagan fertility festivals that were inherited, and to some degree assimilated, by Easter Sunday, supposedly one of the most holy days on the Christian calendar.

There may be a Christian veneer over this celebration now, but the pagan symbols are just under the surface; a fact that can be quite disturbing to some Christians. Many believers actually entertain doubts about having any celebration at all of Easter Sunday or Easter in general.

It's well-known in certain circles that the church overlaid its own commemoration of the resurrection overtop of fertility festivals that already existed in the ancient cultures where it was trying to gain ground.

Some congregations today think that since the only element of Easter that actually relates to Jesus Christ is the Mass, or Holy Communion, the whole Easter celebration should be abandoned.

It's quite true that most traditions connected to Easter Sunday can't be found in the Bible story of Christ's death and resurrection. So should the celebration in general be abandoned?

In support of this idea, some argue that the event has actually caused more rancor than harmony in the church, citing divisive disputes over the proper dates of Easter as one example.

Yet it seems unlikely that the church will ever abandon this festival now. And you might view it as having taken those ancient pagan festivals and "sanctified" them, in the same way it claims to have taken sinful individuals and done the same.

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Decoration And Coloring Of Easter Eggs

It should not be surprising to discover that the decoration and coloring of Easter eggs didn't start with Easter itself, but seems to have existed as a practice long before that celebration came into being.

Eggs are linked to fertility, for obvious reasons, and have been used in and connected to fertility festivals apparently for millennia. As you look through ancient writings and archeological records that predate the origin of Easter, you see the egg appearing at moments that celebrate the fertility of the earth and the return of spring.

There were many similarities and connections between the ancient faith of Zoroastrianism and Judaism and later Christianity, and Easter eggs may be another connection. Zoroastrians began painting eggs for the New Year celebration about 2500 years ago in Persia, and their New Year happened to be the day of the spring equinox.

Judaism, too, uses an egg in its spring festival, the Passover Seder, although this hard-boiled egg is not painted. These are just two examples of eggs being involved in practices that probably became part of the history of Easter.

Over time, Easter eggs have been largely secularized, not always carrying a spiritual connotation. In Imperial Russia, the House of Faberge created stunning jeweled eggs, the miniatures to wear around the neck during Easter celebrations and larger, more intricate ones for lavish display.

Slavic cultures have turned eggs into canvases for brilliant and colorfully painted designs. Eggs began as pagan symbols, were adopted as Christian symbol Easter eggs, and now may have veered away again.

They still have some spiritual significance, but have largely become either works of art in their own right, or simply objects of fun for children.

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Easter Crosses Offer Hope And Faith

The meaning of Easter is inextricably tied to the symbol of the cross, and what was once a Roman instrument of torture and death has been transformed, as it has transcended its origins and become something entirely other.

Over the centuries it has turned into a symbol of hope and faith, as Christianity has lifted it up from its dark beginnings. Easter crosses hearken back to the moment when Christ made the supreme sacrifice, and all the world was said to have changed forever.

In the Indian Orthodox churches, Easter crosses are given a special role during this spring celebration. These churches believe they were founded by the Apostle Thomas when he journeyed to India, and their customs are often somewhat distinct from other branches of the church.

In a way, the crosses they use at Easter mimic the Christian Easter story itself. They begin their own story as Lent begins, when the crosses are set in the center of the church and covered by a veil.

Now the Easter crosses are carried around the church, and are used to touch and bless the people in the congregation. Then these crosses are put to rest until the Feast of Ascension, set on their heads in the sanctuary.

The people of the Indian Orthodox Church have a very intimate and powerful relationship with these crosses used in their Christian Easter ceremonies. They, perhaps more than the members of other churches, have exalted what once were instruments of torture and made them into personal symbols of beauty and redemption.

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Australian Wine Festivals

Early Australian wine production dates back to the 1791, when grapes were imported from Europe and wine was shipped back to the United Kingdom. Slowly but surely, Australian vineyards in New South Wales, Tasmania, Western Australia, Victoria and South Australia sprouted up.

The industry was furthered by the Land Selection Act, which freed up land that had been locked for gold rush mine development and the removal of trade barriers when the federation was established in 1901.

The industry experienced ups and downs during the world wars, due to space constraints, overproduction and changing British government rules, but by the 1950s, the industry was thriving, with South Australia leading the way. Australians have grown to love and appreciate wine even more over the years as their wineries gain international recognition.

The Australian wine export market totaled 2.8 billion dollars in 2007, with an annual growth of 9%. The biggest competition comes from California, France and Italy, which are still holding their own in the global market.

New marketing strategies have been targeting the upscale markets, since many view Australian brands as being a good wine to grab if it's being promoted. While Australia is often seen as a newcomer to the wine-making scene, its success, particularly in Shiraz production, is impressive.

One of the best times to experience Australian wine is to come during one of the Australian festivals. Every month, the Victorian Wine Regions feature a Showcase Series at Fed Square in Melbourne, which features wine from a particular region.

You can chat with winemakers and experts from the selected region and try different wineries all in one convenient location. If you come during January, then there's a Tasmanian Fruit Wine Festival.

Melbourne's Food and Wine Festival is in March and the Barossa Vintage Festival in April can't be beat! Brisbane has a nice Fine Wine Festival in July and the Hunter Valley has a "Jazz in the Vines" series in October. Lastly, the Margaret River Wine Region has a festival in November.

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