Tag Archives: easter

Easter Bunnies Messengers

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Waukesha, Wisconsin
Performance Date: 4/25/2012
Primary Language: English

Story:

 

“When I was a little girl my mother told me that the bunnies that came out during the spring were the Easter Bunny’s messengers and they told him what I was doing and whether or not I was being a good girl. The amount of candy and presents I got would depend on how good I had been. Later I found out the Easter Bunny wasn’t real and that the bunnies were just bunnies, but I always wondered whether my mother had changed the amount of candy my sister and I got because she thought we had been bad children. I doubt it though.

 

I remembered this from my childhood because I love animals and because bunnies always start coming out in the spring and whenever I see one I can’t help but remember. I loved holidays and I think my family made this up to discipline the children subtly. They wanted us to behave and they bribed us in a way. Just like during the Christmas season when children are told St. Nick is watching. I guess this story was a variation on that. “

 

Many other countries have holiday figures with helpers, like Santa Claus and the Krampus in Germany.  The rabbit is a fertility symbol during Easter which, before becoming Christianized, was a fertility ritual.  All of the rabbits are coming out so they would be easy to spot in the days before Easter.

Easter Egg Hunts

Nationality: European, Lebanese
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Brea, California
Performance Date: 6 April 2012
Primary Language: English

Easter egg hunts have long been a family tradition for this informant. Every year, her parents will hide eggs for her and they will also paint eggs the night before. In the Easter eggs, they will hide candy or small toys. Of course, now that she is older it is more of a fun tradition they keep. However, when she was younger, her and her sister always had huge Easter egg hunts.

This year, a few days before Easter, this informant, me and many more of our friends went around campus at midnight at we hid a total of 1,000 filled Easter eggs in random places. After getting our bags of Easter eggs, we became the Easter bunnies and hid the eggs all around the school campus. We did not tell anyone we were doing so, but the next day, we found out that it was a great success and many people found the candy-filled eggs with delight!

When I was younger, my parents would hide eggs all around our backyard as well and then as we got older, we started going to the city-wide Easter egg hunts at Chase Palm Park in Santa Barbara. There kids from all over the town raced to get as many eggs as possible, some eggs would have candy, some eggs would have tickets to redeem for prizes. I always loved this and we would go with all our friends. The golden eggs in each arena would have extra big prizes too.

Easter has always been a time of traditions, as is any holiday. And easter egg hunts have been a tradition for many both in childhood and then in adulthood. I believe that many childhood traditions stay because when we all grow up and have kids, we then pass our childhood traditions to our kids, so in a way, we never stop hunting for eggs or trick or treating.

Easter Traditions

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 8 April 2012
Primary Language: English

Every year on the eve of Easter, my informant’s mother and aunt would hide easter baskets around her backyard and throw green Easter grass in piles around the backyard as well. They would then make little tracks and make the Easter grass lead out the yard door to make it seem like the Easter bunny had left a trail. The first Easter that they had done this, the informant had woken up early and “prowled” around the apartment and backyard to look for Easter eggs. However, everyone else was still asleep and so she waited until her mother got up and told her aunt that she had already found all the baskets, but didn’t touch any of them. After everyone was awake, she went around to collect her Easter baskets and showed them how the Easter bunny had gotten in.

Easter originated as a pagan festival and then morphed through many other ways into the holiday it is today. The Easter bunny, though thought to be a random animal chosen to be associated with Easter, actually came from the original Easter Pagan Festival. The goddess Eastre’s earthly symbol was the rabbit and the Anglo-Saxons had worshipped her through the rabbit. In fact, Easter was not widely celebrated in America until after the Civil War, when it became popular with Christians. Eggs, on the other hand became associated with Easter because they represented fertility and rebirth.

Annotation/Additional Comments: More information about this folklore can be found at this source: http://www.phancypages.com/newsletter/ZNewsletter2599.htm. Easter has been a holiday that has been plagued by business as with many other widespread holidays. However, it is interesting to see that many of the traditions associated with Easter were actually traditions that originated with the holiday.

Cheese Casserole at Easter

Nationality: European, Lebanese
Age: 20
Occupation: Children's Book Writer
Residence: Brea, California
Performance Date: 8 April 2012
Primary Language: English

You start by buttering slices of bread and decrusting them and then cutting them into little cubes. Then you put them all in a big baking dish and mix 2/3 quart of milk (as this recipe got handed down it really got complicated), four eggs, a teaspoon of dry mustard, 2/3 a teaspoon of dry salt and you mix all of those ingredients together and whisk it and then you pour it over the bread. Also before all this, you would fry up eight pieces of bacon. So, after you have the bread in the pirate’s pan and the milk poured over the eggs you crumble the strips of bacon and sprinkle them on top and then put it in the refrigerator and let it sit overnight. Then, in the morning you bake it at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

Every Easter, my informant would have this Cheese Casserole/Souffle. Her mom used to make it every Easter and she had it given to her by a friend at a church and the church was the one she used to attend when she was little, so she would eat it there too. Her daughters say that they will make it for their families as well.

For me, it was interesting to here that a casserole dish was so popular amongst a family. For some reason, all my childhood, I had thought that brussel sprouts, casseroles, meatloaf, and fruit cake were the four no-no foods in American society. I had never eaten any of then because my mom would always make us traditional Chinese food and though I always ate more American food anyways, my mom knew nothing about casseroles.  So, to hear that this dish was passed down so many generations and actually liked was so mind-blowing. In this case, the informant always made this for Easter Day and I believe that it is made on that particular holiday because of the main ingredient of eggs and the yellow color of the dish. I remembered last year actually when I celebrated Easter with my friend’s family, there were an array of egg-based dishes and only egg-based dishes, but such an assortment it was. Since on easter we have the tradition of the Easter Egg Hunt and Spring chicks, that is a natural food we eat on that Holiday as well.

The Roast

Nationality: American
Age: ~70
Occupation: Retiree
Residence: Altadena, CA
Performance Date: April 8, 2012
Primary Language: English

The informant recounted the legend on Easter in the context of telling family stories. She acknowledges that it isn’t specifically tied to her family but could be from anyone’s family.

Story:
A mother is teaching her daughter how to cook a ham, and when she cuts the end off, and puts it aside, and puts the ham in the oven and bakes it. [The informant mimes these actions as she tells the story.]

And the daughter says: ‘Why did you do that?’

And she says: ‘Oh, I don’t know, because my mother did.’

So, the daughter goes to the grandma and she says: ‘Grandma, why did you do that?’

And she says: ‘I don’t know, because my mother did.’

And so, she goes to the great-grandma and she says: ‘Grandma, why did you do that?’

And she says: ‘Cuz I had a small pan!’

[Everyone at the table chuckles.]

Me: And when would you tell that story?

Informant: To your granddaughter? I don’t know. When you’re eating ham? [laughs] When someone asks “why?”.

 

Analysis:

This exists both as a general funny story to tell to the family but also as a piece of meta-folklore explaining how traditions come to be. It also follows the rule of three from Olrik’s epic laws. The daughter has to ask three mothers to get her answer about the tradition.