Three things we never told you about Easter

At the end of the celebration of Maundy Thursday, the bells, which usually ring in churches, become “silent”, to respect the silence of the intense days that follow. In some regions, therefore, rattles are used, in their place, to announce services. Popular tradition imagines these bells flying to Rome to be blessed by the Pope. They will “return” on Sunday, without fail, to bring the good news of the Resurrection. And drop treats and eggs in the gardens and on the balconies along their route.

This is the number of lambs that will be served on tables in France during the Easter celebrations. A cruel paradox for this animal which symbolizes innocence and the renewal of nature in spring. Unlike Jewish and Muslim traditions, the consumption of lamb among Christians is not a religious ritual but a cultural and family habit. We are therefore a long way from the “Paschal Lamb” that Christ himself symbolically is. Offered as a sacrifice on the Cross, to “remove the sin of the world”, he, in fact, put an end, by his death, to all traditional religious blood ritual sacrifices.

The custom of offering decorated eggs, well before the Christian era, marked the return of the fertility of the earth. In the Christian world, the ban on eating meat and eggs during Lent undoubtedly encouraged its maintenance. In fact, the eggs laid during Lent were then blessed, decorated and then offered to children. In Alsace and in countries with Germanic cultures, it is the rabbit, another symbol of fertility, which is customary and which “provides” the eggs which become sweets.